Why Small-Scale Biomass Energy Projects Aren't a Solution To Climate Change 178
Lasrick writes "Roberto Bissio has an excellent piece in a roundtable on biomass energy, pointing out that small scale biomass energy projects designed for people in poor countries aren't really a solution to climate change. After pointing out that patent protections could impede wide-spread adoption, Bissio adds that the people in these countries aren't really contributing to climate change in the first place: 'Why? Because poor people, whose carbon emissions these technologies would reduce, produce very little carbon in the first place. As I mentioned in Round One, the planet's poorest 1 billion people are responsible for only 3 percent of global carbon emissions. The 1.26 billion people whose countries belong to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development account for 42 percent of emissions. The rich, if they reduced their emissions by just 8 percent, could achieve more climate mitigation than the poor could achieve by reducing their emissions to zero. The rich could manage this 8 percent reduction by altering their lifestyles in barely noticeable ways. For the poor, a reduction of 100 percent would imply permanent misery.'"
Re: False premise. (Score:1, Funny)
Yes, I second scientific ignorance and unreserved faith in books written by men who didn't even know that a planet was much less an atmoshpere or the disciplines of ecology or climatology.
Be gone foul demon! Trouble me no more with your vapors or temptations.
I am a man of the book and have no need of your prattling.