Flying on Bio?
The big news today seems to be about Virgin flying to Amsterdam with a plane that is using bio-fuel for one of it’s engines. I initially thought to myself that this was a good thing from an environmental point-of-view, but as the morning has dragged on I’ve come to the conclusion that it somehow feels immoral. In fact I think the whole idea of bio-fuel is immoral. Here’s why.
We live in a world of extremes. We have very rich people and very poor people. We also have people who eat way too much and are obese and people who are starving. Now people who are rich aren’t necessarily obese but people who are starving are generally speaking the poorest people on the planet. The reasons for their situation can be many and varied. It could be due to famine or war or they could simply be the poorest of the poor in a generally poor country. How you solve the economics of their situation isn’t the point of this article but I ask the question “why are they starving?”
We in the “West” and other economically viable parts of the planet have the ability and technology to grow more food than we require. A good job too with all these obese people around methinks, but that ability only exists NOW. Also we waste food like there was no tomorrow.
I remember when I was a child that if I left any food my parents would remind me that there were plenty of starving children around the world who could live on what I was leaving. I’ve no doubt there are many of you out there who were told the same or similar. Naturally I had the usual childish thought “well please send it to them”, a thought which was never actually vocalised. Isn’t it funny how childish thoughts can have a certain logic to them? Why can’t we send all this current over-production to feed the starving? Now that I am an adult this little bit of parenting has instilled in me my own distaste to see food wasted and I’ve done exactly the same thing with my own children and I hope they do the same with theirs. Anyway back on tack…
As populations around the globe increase we will need to grow more and more. There will come a point where we can no longer even tolerate obesity. It will be looked upon, almost as smoking is now, as a social crime. Now I’m not trying to get at fat people here, they need to sort themselves out, but my point is that we will reach a point where food production and population levels balance each other out. Any reduction in food production or increase in population level will upset that balance to bad effect. Don’t forget that as population increases there is a greater need for housing which also requires land. This makes me wonder why we are even considering turning large tracts of valuable farming land over to bio-fuel crop production. In fact I can’t even consider them as crops, so bio-fuel plants then, and you can take “plant” in whatever sense suits you. Of course we have already started to do it so my use of the word “considering” is somewhat misplaced.
The two main reasons used as excuses for growing bio-fuel plants are that the fuel is less harmful to the environment and we are slowly running out of oil. At first glance these may seem to be laudable reasons but in my opinion neither of them over-ride the importance of producing food.
Another question to ask is “what do we need these fuels for anyway?” Apparently to fly planes it would seem and we are all well aware that they can be used as a fuel replacement in many modern, diesel-engined vehicles, with or without some minor modifications.
So here is where I start to get a little controversial. I don’t have a car. Most of the time, if I want to go somewhere I walk. It has certain advantages. I’m not obese for one thing. I don’t need to park my lump of scrap metal on the pavement so that I am as close to the door of the shop I’ve just driven 400 yards to in order that I don’t have to walk too far when I get out of my lump of scrap metal just to buy a bloody newspaper on a Sunday morning. I don’t clog up those wasted areas of land called car-parks. I don’t make a useless contribution to so-called “global warming”. I don’t break the law when answering my mobile phone. I don’t break the speed-limit. I don’t run red traffic lights. I don’t injure or kill people through my bad driving. I don’t drink and drive. I don’t pay huge amounts of indirect tax to the chancellery.
If I need to go somewhere that is too far to walk I catch a bus or train. If I were making daily journeys to work and back, which I’m not, I could even consider a bicycle.
Which all sort of leads to the more controversial question “what on earth do we need cars for in the first place?”. I can’t think of an answer to that one and I don’t think anybody out there could give me one really good reason why they need a car. I do mean a really GOOD reason, not a load of waffle which essentially boils down to the fact that it’s a convenience. Of course it would be great if public transport were more clean and comfortable and there was more of it but if we all used it this would be the norm not the exception. Transport companies that let their standards slip would be placed under a much greater pressure to get their act together than they currently are. So in my opinion, as oil dwindles, cars can die a natural death if they haven’t already. Why wait that long? Fewer vehicles would be an environmental and health benefit if I’m not mistaken.
In my opinion the same kinds of arguments can be applied to aeroplanes. We don’t need those either. “What about going on holiday?” I hear you all asking. “What about going on holiday?” say I. What’s wrong with your own country? Or what’s wrong with a ship or ferry? I think many of today’s problems are down to the fact that people have no patience. They can’t wait. If something doesn’t happen immediately there must be something wrong so we end up inventing things purely for convenience sake or to make things happen more quickly. I say “get a life and slow down”. You’ll live longer and have less chance of suffering from deep vain thrombosis.
So where is all this getting me? Well I certainly don’t believe that we should be wasting valuable land growing bio-fuel plants to keep planes and cars moving. We don’t need them. We do need good transport in the form of buses and trains which can both be electrified and the electricity can be supplied by nuclear power as well as other methods such as wind and wave power. Let us not forget hydro-electricity from dams. Ships and ferries could also be nuclear powered just as certain submarines are and I suspect that in the future there would be miniature nuclear reactors available that could be used in wheeled vehicles. Now the prospect of using more nuclear-powered energy doesn’t please many out there but we really ought to be investing very large sums of money into developing safe methods of nuclear power generation that don’t produce the kind of waste our current methods do plus safe methods of storing or getting rid of the waste we already have. We need to do something now because we will end up with no options at all if we keep prevaricating.
Of course the “oil barons” won’t agree with me but what do I care? Let’s keep our land for what is necessary – FOOD – and come up with better ideas than we currently have for sorting out the apparent “oil problem”. It may even help with the “global warming” problem.
Comments ( 3 )
In the U.S., it’s the poor who are more likely to be obese. Processed/junk food is far cheaper here than fresh foods, which is unfortunate. :/
I think not having a car is feasible for people who live in or very near urban areas. But I’ve lived many places that had no public transportation at all. Stores were often miles and miles away and far apart. Still, I’ve never personally owned a car and have relied on public transportation often. I agree that more people should take advantage of it!
I agree there are problems over there with transport and those vast open spaces you have Jess. But at least you have them. Over here our country-side is slowly being eroded by some misguided need to build houses, with roads and all the other stuff that goes with them rather than concentrating on using inner-city sites that are either already wasteland or are covered in derelict buildings. Seems everyone wants to live next to a field. Fine. But don’t expect to bring all the conveniences of the town/city with you. Rough with the smooth as it were.
And why always houses? What’s wrong with apartments? Seems we can throw up office blocks by the score but why can’t we do apartments?
Mind you the pressure to build these houses would be a lot less if our population didn’t keep increasing but that’s a question I’m not going into as I would sound like I am racist which I’m not.
Still, I think if we had the real inclination to do so we could have designed some sort of clean power system for wheeled vehicles ages ago. But big money always gets in the way of progress.
Totally off-topic but when I was a youngster there were dreams of having manned bases on the moon and large space stations and trips to Mars and all sorts of stuff. I wonder what happened.
It’s all down to how much money they can make. The corporations want more, the governments want more. Alternative fuels and transportation will only suit the big boys if they are great money spinners. Bio could be good for them because they own the land, can charge high prices for growing bio fuels, can charge high prices for selling bio fuels and bring in lots of tax from new parts, cars etc. There is absolutely no intention to make greener cars to save the environment or help the world’s poor – that does not matter at all until they figure out a way to make money out of it. No, it’s all down to how much money they can make out of anything.