Political leaders around the world have been jumping on the latest bandwagon to hit town, cutting carbon emissions. One of the strategies for doing that is reducing the reliance of western countries on oil, favouring more ‘environmentally friendly’ fuels, such as palm oil. That all sounds like a good idea, until you look into where the supply of palm oil is coming from.
Indonesia and Malaysia are jockeying for position, to become the world’s leading producer of palm oil. In order to do that, they much carve out chunks of forest, planting a mono-culture of palm trees, destroying all that was there before. If that isn’t bad enough, the people who are supposed to be planting the palm trees often only want the timber, leaving the land bare.
The Guardian Unlimited has a story about this issue, which points to the end of several ‘flagship’ animal species, including the Sumatran tiger, Asian elephant and orang utan.
Politically the western countries are stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire. The oil supply comes from the Middle East, but the palm oil comes from another Muslim dominated area. Look forward to more trouble boys.
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more info from this site http://www.palmoiltruthfoundation.com/
76% of Malaysia\’s land mass of 32 million ha is green cover. This is far greater than the \’green cover\’ most developed economies can boast. Forests account for 60% of Malaysia\’s land mass. According to FAO data, the UK has less than 12% of land under forest. Agricultural land in UK make up 70% of the total land area. Only 4million ha in Malaysia are oil palm plantations. This has not led to reduced biodiversity and loss of flora and fauna in oil palm plantations as several NGOs have claimed. With 185,000 known species of fauna and 12,500 species of flowering plants, Malaysia ranks as one of the twelve \’mega-diverse\’ countries. Source: Malaysian Palm Oil Council According to studies, he added, 1.2 tonnes of fossil fuel has to be utilised to produce one tonne of canola oil based biodiesel. However, because palm based biomass is used in the heating boiler system that produces biodiesel, palm oil production did not require much fossil energy. Source: Palm Oil Based Biodiesel has greater potential for longevity You just need to do a bit more research and you\’ll find the answers you need.