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.'"
Madagascar (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor people may not have much of a carbon footprint, but if there is no alternative to deforesting your island home, then the impact on the environment would be larger than just how much CO2 you produce.
Re:Madagascar (Score:2, Insightful)
See also: Haiti.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8520/8578860427_9cb7a29b78_o.jpg [staticflickr.com]
The Rich (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, the rich. That is EVERYONE reading this.
The poorest 1 billion people on this planet do not have computers to read slash dot. As such they will not be taking part in the following discussion.
ideological blinders (Score:5, Insightful)
Same with energy solutions and climate change. Some folks think batteries are going to save us because apparently their thinking about energy generation stops at the electric plug.
One reason the cost of solar has yet to catch up to the cost of oil is because every time the price of oil goes up, there is more oil available. When the cost goes up, it is profitable to drill deeper and to keep marginal wells and refineries open longer. Basic economics.
We need affordable energy today. I think giving the poor people who need energy today a cheap and hopefully sustainable solution is addressing the issue (instead of increasing it by giving them oil wells and SUVs) but it doesn't address the big sunk costs of dams which are silting up or transmission wires which are growing old or energy generating plants which last for 40 or 60 years.
Same old same old. Most of the folks who present solutions can't even accurately describe the problem and the current situation.
you are almost certainly one of them (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you live in India or China? If not, you're probably in that top 20%. I see you have a computer or mobile device , so that almost guarantees you're in the richest few hundred million.
I make at least $50K, so I'm in the top 0.5% and I'm on Slashdot.
14%, says the EPA. Electricity and cars are 68% (Score:5, Insightful)
The EPA says industry accounts for 14% .
Electricity is 38% and automobiles are 31%.
You can reduce the emissions by cars primarily by increasing the production of electricity, while at the same time increasing other pollutants, so there's not much benefit working with cars until you have clean electricity.
You can get about 8% of your electricity cleanly through hydro and wind. That does mean you'll have to put up with windmills in your backyard.
Massachusetts had a big problem there - they wanted wind power, but refused to have windmills.
So where are you going to get the other 92% of your energy? Natural gas is cleanER.
Nuclear is really scary to the uninformed, but by FAR the cleanest. It produces an incredibly tiny amount of really nasty stuff and small amount of safe stuff that's scary because like our own bodies, it's "radioactive". Sun light is a billion times more radioactive, but for decades the "green" PR was so anti-nuclear that they are having a hell of time turning that around.
Carbon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Getting free Biogas for cooking, lighting or produce electricity plus a better fertilizer is nothing to sneeze at.
Re: Madagascar (Score:0, Insightful)
Re: False premise. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think that Ayn Rand is philosophy, and that having read Ms Rand makes you "very well read in philosophy", we can only hope for your sake that you're only 15 and you'll grow up in a few years time.
In the meantime, you seem to be using an awful lot of words that don't mean what you think they mean. "Liberal", "censoring", the aforementioned "philosophy", and "fuck". Oh, and "statist".
You may want to politely enquire with your English teacher about the possibility of borrowing a dictionary; if it's not to "statist" or "liberal" for you, your local library may have one.
Now get the hell off my lawn!
In someone's imagination. France has cheap nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
France sells billions of dollars of power they generate to other countries. Their energy cost is among the lowest in the industrialized world, and it's nuclear.
The infographic you linked where someone is imagining what-if scenarios is nice and all, but in the real world, the actual cost that is really paid is low for nuclear.
France has been doing nuclear in a big way for almost 40 years, they aren't imagining what they think it might cost.