save the world from carbon by...burning more stuff?

The biofuel cheerleaders who maintained the website of Biopact have called it quits, they say, to go do a "humanitarian" project (oh and they wouldn't think of benefiting from the project by pulling land into carbon credit markets of course...), under the name "the Biochar Fund," ostensibly "improving" the agricultural practices of small "slash and burn" farmers by putting charcoal in the soil (And they get this charcoal how again? Charcoal pyrolysis? Burning things, just at a lower temperature, or with zapping them with high temps with electricity...generated by what again? Perhaps burning things these farmers hadn't burnt before? Which provides fertilizer and electricity they say. Creating new demands and bringing modern conveniences to the ignorant heathen who must thirst for such help and succor. More internal combustion must be the answer.). Seems Biopact wore out their welcome and ducked out of the range of criticism when they realized they may have had a large role in the starvation crisis hitting people all over the globe right now.

http://biopact.com/2008/03/biopact-creates-biochar-fund.html

Scratch the surface of these kinds of projects when you smell a rat. It would be fine if the small farmers had asked for help, and they knew fully what they were in for, and could read the fine print. But in cases like this, when you can sense the arrogant Green contempt for the "slash and burn" agriculture of the know-nothing traditional farmers, you can bet that this scheme is not the idea of the farmers themselves. It is no doubt the idea of some conservationists who want that land not to be available for traditional subsistence needs, and who, whether or not they are christians, act with that missionary zeal which is just a symptom of that same conceit that you will see in the most dogmatic missionaries. There are well-documented cases of western NGOs doing the bidding of coercive government land confiscation ministries in the area where Biochar will be working. That is not to say we have the facts in yet, but it is worth looking into.

The past two years, Special Rapporteurs have been assigned by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to research the effects of carbon mitigation efforts and tree plantations on indigenous peoples worldwide. In the resulting documents, they cited a case of relocations assisted by "aid organizations" in Africa that was shocking, but unfortunately not an isolated incident.

The World Rainforest Movement did a very good report on the maneuvering that has gone into kicking so-called "slash and burn" farmers off of their land in southeast Asia. The rotational agriculture these "slash and burn" farmers have done for ages is quite sound (land lies fallow and retains its fertility again) if they are not pushed off traditional lands into new frontier areas by agribusiness interests and plantations and such enterprises. The maneuvering to grab land for plantations in Asia and elsewhere has been done by large pulp and paper companies and consultants that stood to profit handsomely by setting down monocrop tree plantations all over the world in the name of "reforestation," "afforestation," and "carbon sinks." The "peasants" and the indigenous in SE Asia have now been resettled to make room for the corporations and according to the World Food Programme they are starving to death right NOW. Yet with the new road from Thailand through Laos to China, "development" is the word of the day, and huge land concessions are evidently being granted to China to plant more plantations in the region. Larry Lohmann at the Cornerhouse has also shown the sinister mechanics of this process of dispossession. We can see what is going on. It is no secret, we are just not paying attention, and that is the only reason we are not intervening.

This absurdity needs to stop.

"Indigenous peoples were facing a growing crisis as climate change, unchecked economic growth and discriminatory national laws forced them from their lands into urban areas that offered them insufficient social services, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues heard today."

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2008/hr4951.doc.htm

Ever since Standard Oil started doing its work promoting the green revolution in the midwestern US back in the 20th century, we have seen energy companies playing this convoluted game of land grabbing through their self-interested "helpfulness" (The tentacles of that particular Standard Oil brand of "helpfulness" then proceeded to go choke all sorts of different indigenous peoples throughout Latin America and the world. See Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done).

Corporations find all sorts of ways to create new markets and new needs (you can bet the green revolution was a good thing for petroleum based fertilizer, and therefore good for the sales of the energy company in the Rockefeller case too, not just in the case of this new Biochar charcoal-carbon Green scheme). All the while they'll get the serfs to foot the bill, for example by lobbying governments to subsidize corn farmers to grow more genetically modified corn for ethanol to go in our gastanks. Often the public will make their projects more profitable by providing the infrastructure, the rails and roads on the specious theory that more commerce is equivalent to a net gain for all of the public. What's good for GM is good for us, yes? So yes, we pay for that development. And we pay to take away any infrastructure, too, if that can be good for the company, as in the case of the conspiracy between GM and firestone (and what was it, Ford?) to get rid of efficient mass transit in L.A. (See Kunstler's book). Austerity measures, structural adjustment, all sorts of those "externalities" come to mind, where the public absorbs the costs or the risks, or the pollution or gets kicked off their frickin' land.

Monsanto and Cargill and other such rackets ARE using the food crisis they helped create to sell us MORE of their products. "Only our higher-yielding brand of genetically modified organism can feed the world, now that there's a Food Crisis," they say. And they will get their products sold, whatever they have to resort to. Did you know this? We haven't been asked whether we want to support these corporations financially. They have fought off legislation that would mandate the labeling of GMO beet sugar in your breakfast cereal, for example. Oh that cheeky mischievous Cargill, sneaking their product into our food again without our consent. Monsanto getting their corn into your gas tank without you even knowing it. We pay these transnational corporations to take advantage of us. And just think what they are willing to do abroad if they're willing to cheat "their own people" this way.

Point is, look into what the humanitarian philanthropist scam artists are doing in far away places. Whenever you see offers to preserve rainforests on cereal or milk boxes, find out who the corporation has displaced off their lands before you leap to the conclusion that they are doing good in the world. "Buyer beware," "who benefits?" and all that.