Tuesday, October 30, 2007

No bread in exchange for oil (os)

I found this more or less correct translated headline at the German newspaper "Die Zeit". I want to post it here because it captures aspects, which in my opinion are mentioned too little in the recent discussion about climate change. And if you think about it, in some way it is more about economics than you maybe thought at the first look. Why? Because the author makes it clear: also bio fuel is a scarce good. At the time we mix our conventional fuel with bio fuel, we act as an additional consumer and raise the price. By this, at the first look environmentally sound action we forget possible consequences like people in less developed countries, who use for example corn as an essential part of there food can now not afford it anymore. Or second, in Indonesia for example they cut rainforest to obtain more space for the palm-oil production.

So we use the bio fuel, and think that we gave our best to save the nature – the warm glow of giving - but in fact we cut a lot of possibilities of other people and to some extend we actually harm the environment. Now you can argue, that all of this things happen all the time and you cannot stop them or anything. I know about the wealth, which was brought to us by the industrial revolution and all the stuff. But this is not the point. I am just annoyed by the double standard of the actual environmental policy