A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

154 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingfraction of the fossil fuels used for transport. It is estimated, for instance,that even if the entire US maize crop were used for ethanol,it would replace only about 20 per cent of domestic petrol consumption.316 To power 10 per cent of the US’s cars with home-grownmaize-based ethanol, according to the Organisation for EconomicCo- operation and Development, would require almost one-third ofUS farmland. 317 A study sponsored by the European EnvironmentAgency and the German Environment Ministry doesn’t see it as desirableto plan for more than 10 per cent of the EU’s transport fueldemand to be met by biofuels. 318 Biofuels can make up no more than5 per cent of petrol or diesel consumption in the US and the EuropeanUnion without causing environmental damage, according to areport from Bank Sarasin. 319What’s more, there is no guarantee that the huge takeover of landwould slow in any way the exploitation of the fossil fuels still remainingunderground. Such so-called ‘renewable’ fuels are not, in fact, goingto be renewable if today’s industrial, transport and military structuresremain locked in place. As columnist George Monbiot explains,‘every year we use four centuries’ worth of plants and animals’ in theform of coal, oil and gas. ‘The idea that we can simply replace thisfossil legacy – and the extraordinary power densities it gives us – withambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitutefor cutting back.’ 320 Julia Olmsted of the Land Institute in theUS concurs: ‘Pushing biofuels at the expense of energy conservationtoday will only make our problems more severe, and their solutionsmore painful, tomorrow.’ 321But it can’t be verified anyway to what extent a tree plantation orother biotic project ‘compensates’ for fossil fuel use.Why can’t it?The problem – as described in Chapter 1 – is that above-ground bioticcarbon and below-ground fossil carbon are connected to the atmospherein different ways. Geologically, socially, politically, biologicallyand climatically, fossil carbon can’t be equated with biotic carbon.These differences are so great that they make nonsense out of the carbonmarket’s claim that tree plantations or similar schemes ‘sequester’carbon on the earth’s surface in a way that is quantifiably comparableto the way coal and oil ‘sequester’ carbon underground. ‘Sequestering’,after all, means separating, and there are many degrees of separation.The carbon in a cigarette, in the fluid in a lighter, in grass ora tree trunk, in furniture or paper, in the top seven inches of soil, incoal deposits a kilometre underground, in carbonate rock dozens of