The news said GM has a new project where they are processing wood chips and waste paper to make biofuel now. Chevron and Weyerhaeuser formed a new company to put trees in your gas tank. With the new push for cellulose and lignin biofuels, waste is to be profitable like it never was before, so it will be okay to make more of it. Be a good citizen, help us be energy independent. Burn TREES in your GAS TANK. We'll sell you corn stalk compost from our fields to put in your gas tank, and next year since the soil is dead on account of our removing all organic content from it, we'll amend the soil with fossil fuel to fertilize our next crop of cellulose for the ethanol we'll sell you. Farmers, Monsanto, Standard Oil, and YOU, one big life cycle, a good team. Good for the earth, good for each other.
Petroleum companies that apparently used to oppose ethanol are now fully on the bandwagon, even driving the wagon now, and they are acting like oil companies always have. They are starting a new global land grab the likes of which we have never seen. And we thought it was bad before. It used to be what was under the soil that they wanted to get at. Now they will grab up any open land at all, as long as it will grow something we can put in our gas tanks, whatever it is, switchgrass, hemp, whatever. And as oil companies have traditionally done, they are pushing off anybody who stands in their way. Using forestry policies and militaries controlled by corrupt officials in developing countries, they have been removing poor people from lands for years now already and because nobody wealthy or powerful has noticed they have plans for more of the same.
So it looks like will burn every life form on earth until all we relatively wealthy "developed" people (wealthy people code for "whole" or "advanced") have left to burn or to eat is each other. Clearly it doesn't phase us that people are dying because of us, and it won't phase the most wealthy of all "consumers" when we ourselves turn into the victims of their consumption. We will never stop; it seems as long as people are relatively wealthy they can never really care what happens to the rest of the living beings. Oh yes, you see, the wealthy have higher values, they pursue something greater only others of their godlike stature can conceive of. They will direct our collective aggregated wealth to the moon where they will farm with moonbeams and laser precision and mine asteroids; they will fund grand the particle physics projects at CERN in Switzerland that risk swallowing the earth in a black hole, for the grand ends only these mighty souls have the capacity to imagine. What resplendent utopian futures they must have in store for us, these gods on earth. They must know what they are doing, right? They would't exploit all of humanity and destroy and consume all living things on earth just for fun, would they? Poor people just have to trust the rich, it turns out. Not much can be done about it if a god happens to have sadistic appetites, after all.
As for all us regular privileged earthlings without any idea of any wise master plan, we will keep feeding our cows (don't worry, they eat the byproduct from the ethanol process too, so it's all okay) and feeding our automobiles with food or things grown on land that could have made people-food; we already do all this, and we will continue, without shame, to power our huge new ethanol switchgrass fuel plants with coal burning power plants; we will use people-food to power our luxury conveniences-- more of the things the people currently starving around the world have never had-- as millions of human bodies are becoming emaciated, having nothing to eat but their own flesh. We will burn food. We will burn food in our cars. We are doing this now, why quit if we're doing fine?
This system is so far beyond any cannibalism in its monstrosity it is hard to find the words to call it what it is. Jean Ziegler was right about biofuels being a crime against humanity, but let us take this to its logical conclusion. If we drive vehicles that are fueled in part by ethanol --which we do, because it was mandated by congress-- then we are complicit in this crime. If the congress does not abolish this mandate and all ethanol incentives right now, they are without doubt criminal. The information is available to all of us. There is no excuse not to know. Regardless of what the corn-grower lobbyists say, and regardless of how the die-hard farm state ethanol congresspeople vote, the rest of us should know better.
If you ever wondered how genocides can go on under the noses of--or on behalf of-- perfectly decent and humane people, take a look at the one you are perpetrating on most of the world at this very moment. This is death we will never admit we are responsible for, if we are like most executioners and perpetrators of genocide. Either the life that is dying is just taking its natural course, it has nothing to do with us, it is beneath us, it is inconsequential; or they deserve it, it's them or us, it's a necessary evil, the least of the evils, it's a tradeoff," not our fault, not our problem, carry on, life here is fine, ignore the ashes coming from that smokestack over there, and do not ask about that smell of burning flesh. It is nothing. Put it out of your mind.
Watch the national discourse on food prices right now. The Washington Post series by Dan Morgan from this past week, the New York Times series, the discussions carried on in the C-SPAN hearings. It is shocking and horrifying to see the way the burning of food crops is addressed, as well as to see the general casual detachment with which these issues are discussed. The facts are there, but somehow logical conclusions are not drawn.
Yes, to reiterate again, natural gas-derived anhydrous ammonia is used as fertilizer for these biofuel crops. Yes, we are using fossil fuels to produce "clean" biofuels. Or what do they call them? Sustainable? Or renewable? It is hard to keep all the lies straight. This is all so absurd. When we run out of fossil fuels, uh, how do we keep fertilizing these "renewables"?
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