Friday, Mar 31, 2006 at 09:22
Despite being a proponent of bio-fuels, it saddens me to see stories like on Dateline this week where Indonesian companies are
clearing rainforest habitat wholesale in order to plant palm oil plantations - one of the chief sources of raw material for commercial biodiesel. Said rainforest just happens to be one of the last strongholds of orang-utan. Kind of makes the environmental benefits moot if we are destroying an irreplaceable resource to gain a renewable one.
Mind you it's the long term interests of the planet at stake here, so you lose a battle to win the war, but it's a horrible price.
Of course Australia is going to be lining up to buy this palm oil for processing in
Darwin I believe. Given our track record of political relations with Indonesia, I'm not sure that developing a long term reliance on that particular country for
fuel is such a good idea... what will it take to get a self-contained bio-
fuel industry up and running in this country!?!?
Maybe an opportunity for cyclone affected farmers in Qld??? Dunno how palm oil compares as a cash crap to bananas, but surely someone in this country must be interested in the idea of growing our own oil. Palm oil is the highest producing oil crop per hectare out of all suitable crops - it can produce 5650 litres of oil per hectare - almost 5 times what canola can produce (see chart).
Have firmly resolved that our next vehicle will be diesel.
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