Thursday 12 April 2007

The Economist and Castro finally agree

Fidel Castro returns and delivers a speech that needed to be made about how the rush to biofuels means that land previusly dedicated to food will be converted to produce fuel. This benefits the first world and increases the problems in the third world.

The Economist, rarely a supporter of Castro agreed.

"But when he roused himself from his sickbed last week to write an article criticising George Bush's unhealthy enthusiasm for ethanol, he had a point."

It all comes back to the fact that the world still believes that we don't need to make a radical shift in the way that we live our life and believe that technology will do it for us.

Offsetting your carbon by planting trees? Could be doing more harm than good

Carbon offsetting appears to be the new trend whereby instead of concentrating on reducing your energy consumption, people find it easier to carry on flying and buy a few trees to offset their carbon emissions. Also known as greenwashing!

A new report from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in America indicates that unless the planting is done in certain areas, we could actually increase the amount of CO2 as planting trees on exposed areas may simply absorb the heat rather than reflect in back in the atmosphere.

Many companies now offer the choice of investing money in alternative technology as well as forestry. Lucy Siegel in the Observer has a piece on how to choose the best scheme