[SustainableTompkins] SustainableTompkins Digest, Vol 16, Issue 18

[Margaret McCasland]

Dear Sustainable Tompkins folks,

I'm writing from Melbourne, Australia, where I am staying for four
months taking care of my grandson. I have only occasional internet
access and have not been reading the ST list-serve regularly.  So I
hope this is not a redundant link regarding one of the downsides of
bio-diesel (followed by some of my incidental thoughts on tree
plantations and hydro power. They ARE related--but that's another
topic.)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0322-01.htm

Published on Thursday, March 22, 2007 by Inter Press Service
Biofuels Boom Spurring Deforestation
by Stephen Leahy


Yesterday I was riding back to Melbourne with my daughter's family
after a visit to the Snowy Mountains. We had spent a few days in a
national park with relatively minor impacts from introduced species.
As an aside--this is my third trip Down Under, and, after a total of 5
months in Australia, I saw my first kangaroos that were neither road
kill nor in a park or zoo, my first wild wombat (unfortunately road
kill), a pair of wedge-tail eagles, and forest regrowing after fires
(surprisingly beautiful--but these were small, "appropriate scale"
fires).

After we left the national park and re-entered more typical Australian
farmland, I was struck by how boring and lacking in vitality the tree
plantations were, compared with the "natural" forests we had just
left.  This morning I found the above link in my email, which gives
many more reasons than esthetics why we should not encourage tree
plantations.

World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans to countries for
"essential" projects such as giant hydro dams,* highways to promote
access to rain forests, mines and trucking of industrial agriculture
products, and similar attempts by  "the North" to "develop the South"
create a large debt which countries in the South (formerly known as
the Third World) need to repay in dollars. Thus "underdeveloped"
countries with international debt need to produce and sell commodities
that sell on the international market. (The social and economic
impacts of external debt are significant, but another story). The
massive Indonesian rain forests fires of a few years ago were largely
SET to "clear" the rainforest in order to put in palm oil plantations,
because palm oil is an international commodity.**

*I love APPROPRIATE hydro, and we had a lovely stop at one of the
Snowy Hydro stations as we left the mountains. The Snowy Mountains are
the source of 70% of Australia's usable surface water, much of it used
for hydro before it is distributed for irrigation.

** and possibly in those lovely candles you use for "atmosphere"--buy
local beeswax instead!

Time to get off my soapbox.

Margaret McCasland