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To put this into perspective: palm oil for biofuel and heating currently makes up around 60% of the palm oil imports into Europe. Greenpeace has been targeting

by kokey 8y ago

To put this into perspective: palm oil for biofuel and heating currently makes up around 60% of the palm oil imports into Europe. Greenpeace has been targeting European food companies over palm oil where the majority of the increased palm oil demand from Europe that has directly caused the clearing of rainforest to meet this demand, has been for biofuels because the EU had a mandatory biofuels component in fuel. This biofuels policy was driven by anti-nuclear organisations like Greenpeace, and yet they blame food producers whose demand has actually been sustainable without the need for massive clearing out of forests before biofuels came into the picture. The EU has now moved to ban the use of palm oil for biofuel, but it's only being phased out slowly until 2030. This is being replaced by rapeseed oil in Europe. Unfortunately protecting the seeds of this crop was one of the biggest uses of neonicotinoid pesticides which is blamed for the decline in bee populations. The EU now also put a moratorium on using these pesticides so now older and more harmful pesticides are being used instead and with the increased demand I am worried about the impacts we'll see in the future. Yet Greenpeace targets food companies. It's because Greenpeace is a political organisation, their purpose is to be anti-corporation and they just use the environment just as a tool to that end. They target retail brands while staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or through badly conceived regulation.

dools 8y ago
Sources or it didn't happen
- abainbridge 8y ago
  https://www.copenhageneconomics.com/dyn/resources/Publication/publicationPDF/8/448/1528720336/eu-imports-of-palm-oil-16may2018.pdf https://www.copenhageneconomics.com/dyn/resources/Publicatio...
- fyfy18 8y ago
  https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/eu-to-phase-out-palm-oil-from-transport-fuel-by-2030-idUKKBN1JA21F https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/e...
- bartread 8y ago
  Have you heard of Google? </sarcasm> Here's a starter for 10: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/eu-to-phase-out-palm-oil-from-transport-fuel-by-2030-idUKKBN1JA21F https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/e... Interestingly the figure quoted here is half rather than 60%, and it seems the EU want to phase it out entirely, which might explain Greenpeace's "targeting of food companies" and relative lack of apparent interest in biofuels (assuming that's a thing).
  - dools 8y ago
    Yes I'm aware that I can search Google for facts.[0] What I'm interested in are the sources that the author is using so that I can read them, and then compare to searches I might conduct myself.[1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0oa3Qiz5tw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0oa3Qiz5tw [1] https://study.com/academy/lesson/comparing-and-contrasting-sources-of-a-text.html https://study.com/academy/lesson/comparing-and-contrasting-s...
    - mikekchar 8y ago
      Saying it that way will be much more helpful for the conversation. When people say something very easy like "Sources or it didn't happen", my normal gut reaction is to think "That person is just trying to waste my time because they have a contrary stance". Even better would be to say something like "Could you post the sources you used because this source[1] seems to say something different". Sometimes when you are honestly trying to convey some information, people who are contrary are just shouting you down. It's usually better to ignore them because otherwise you end up going down a rabbit hole of their choosing. But, at least for me, if I see that someone is genuinely interested in exploring the subject I'll usually go the extra mile and prepare the information I have. Sometimes it leads me to find out I'm wrong, and I'm always grateful for the prompting.
      - bartread 8y ago
        > When people say something very easy like "Sources or it didn't happen", my normal gut reaction is to think "That person is just trying to waste my time because they have a contrary stance". Agree. To me it almost feels like a pre-programmed response/reaction or, at best, something that might be said to try and be funny, which can be frustrating depending on the context.
cbzbc 8y ago
Greenpeace has been targeting non-sustainable practices in biofuel production - and the ill thought out legislation that led to this for at least the last 10 years, so it is factually incorrect to say that they have been 'staying silent'. Palm oil for biofuel/heating constitutes 55% of palm oil imports, but food and feedstock usage accounts for 40-45%, so it's still a significant area of use Understandably a campaign in this particular area is going to be more visible to the end consumer because of the companies that it targets. And everything is political.
Asooka 8y ago
I hear you, but I also don't want any palm oil in my food. What happened to just using butter, lard, sunflower and olive oil? Just don't eat too much of it and it's not a problem.
- radicalbyte 8y ago
  Palm Oil is dirt cheap.
  - jschwartzi 8y ago
    And it tastes really good, which is why it's being used. It's a saturated fat that nobody has heard of.
avar 8y ago
I disagree with the pseudo-scientific stance Greenpeace and other similar organizations have about nuclear power, but saying they're to blame for our use of palm oils for biofuels is ridiculous. Sure they campaigned against nuclear, but that doesn't mean they approve of whatever other means the EU has been using as an alternative, as they themselves say on their website[1]. I'm sure if they got their way we wouldn't have nuclear or "bad" biofuels, and would just be paying a higher tax rate to scale up our sustainable energy production. That the EU has been dropping nuclear power without that investment in sustainable energy isn't Greenpeace's fault. 1. https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-eu-unit/en/campaigns/Climate/Transport-oil-and-biofuels/ https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-eu-unit/en/campaigns/Clim...
- roenxi 8y ago
  We can shuffle the numbers around all you like, but if we don't use cheap energy then more of our resources go to energy production and standards of living will drop. A "higher tax rate" is slight of hand argument for "we'll make the costs so convoluted that no-body will understand the cause". It isn't a solution to the problem of making people's lives more materially comfortable and satisfying. It is all very well to say that orangutans _should_ be more important than a standard of living, but in practice people will say one thing and vote in a completely different way when they are actually tested. Orangutan are not important compared to keeping families struggling between financially viable and non-viable on the good side of the margins.
  - arbitrary_name 8y ago
    I'm ok with taking a hit if it means more wildlife.
    - ryanmercer 8y ago
      I'm ok with going early 1900's if it means we can get down to 1-2 gigatons of carbon a year instead of nearly 40 this year, and probably more than 40 next year, so we can buy some more time until we can start sequestering excess carbon we've put into the environment before stuff starts getting really bad. We are generating 4x the electricity we were in just the early 1970s, that sort of increase isn't sustainable and we're already seeing consequences of our actions. Unless a fleet of alien ships show up in orbit and charitably give us a bunch of fusion reactors... we've got to start making some pretty radical changes in our lives.
dools 8y ago
"It's because Greenpeace is a political organisation, their purpose is to be anti-corporation" Where did you get that from? Greenpeace has a history of working with corporations to improve their practices and promoting the efforts of corporations to engage in sustainable production: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/greener-electronics-2017/ https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/greener-electronics-2... https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability-old/library/best_practices/sustainable_supply_chain/Greenpeace_Brazil_Soya.html https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability-old/libra... http://changeyourtuna.org.au/ http://changeyourtuna.org.au/
dspillett 8y ago
> They target retail brands This is necessary if they want public support because the general public tend to look at matters much further away then immediately under their nose as being nothing they can do anything significant about, so it is hard to get them engaged even if they actually care. Furthermore, from a cynical sounding but unfortunately true PoV: if you can bring an issue down to "this product/company you deal with every day" many social influencers will jump on the band wagon even if they don't really care... It is not specifically that they target retail brands over all other organisations, but that those are the campaigns that get most public pushing & traction so are the ones you are exposed to more commonly. > while staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or through badly conceived regulation. This is demonstrably not true, and I shall prove my point by providing as many well researched references as you have for your assertion... :-) Less facetiously: your own post contradicts this point by mentioning their strong opposition to nuclear power (while I understand their stance I disagree with being as dogmatic: it is dangerous but the danger is understood and (if well managed until other tech is more ready in a generation or two) offers a less damaging solution overall than other practical options in the near/middle term, and some arguments I've seen include significant scientific misunderstanding or misrepresentation). A strong anti-nuclear stance is hardly just going after retail brands.
CathyWest 8y ago
I just don't understand what Greenpeace has against nuclear power. The Chernobyl disaster has very well demonstrated that even the worst case scenario, while it sucks for people, is not at all bad for the environment.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  It doesn't matter anyway, nuclear power isn't a solution. At best it's a bandaid. First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and non-lung cancers. Second, it takes about 10 metric tons of raw uranium to make enough low enriched uranium to generate 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. If you take known reserves, and estimated undiscovered reserves, we only have 200ish years worth at current energy demands. Energy demands increase over time, for example we are generating 4x the energy we were in the early 1970s and more and more people are being able to afford electronic devices, if you go adding electric vehicles in worthwhile numbers you'll see a rapid spike as well so if we switched the entire world over to uranium based power, we might have 50 years worth. Even if you then use the waste from those reactors, via a different process like YC funded Oklo Inc is attempting to do using nuclear waste as an energy source, you still might only buy the world a century of clean nuclear energy.
  - jschwartzi 8y ago
    The amount of fuel that you're quoting assumes that we don't ever reprocess the spent fuel. While the US doesn't do this due to proliferation concerns, it's possible to dramatically increase the longevity of nuclear power by doing so. This is likely what Oklo is doing. All we need are a couple of centuries to develop better technology than nuclear. We don't need it forever. It buys us time until we can develop storage and eliminate the need for fueled baseload power entirely.
  - biglenny 8y ago
    >First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and non-lung cancers. Hey buddy, the mining isn't much cleaner for the lithium, the cobalt, the REEs, the copper, or really anything required for PVs or the batteries which store their energy. And at least most of the uranium supply is in developed countries.
tristor 8y ago
It's almost like nuclear energy is cleaner for the environment and more long-term sustainable than burning any sort of carbon based fuel, including biofuels. Who would have thought it would be so? Certainly not Greenpeace.

by kokey 8y ago

dools 8y ago

Sources or it didn't happen

abainbridge 8y ago
https://www.copenhageneconomics.com/dyn/resources/Publication/publicationPDF/8/448/1528720336/eu-imports-of-palm-oil-16may2018.pdf https://www.copenhageneconomics.com/dyn/resources/Publicatio...
fyfy18 8y ago
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/eu-to-phase-out-palm-oil-from-transport-fuel-by-2030-idUKKBN1JA21F https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/e...
bartread 8y ago
Have you heard of Google? </sarcasm> Here's a starter for 10: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/eu-to-phase-out-palm-oil-from-transport-fuel-by-2030-idUKKBN1JA21F https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/e... Interestingly the figure quoted here is half rather than 60%, and it seems the EU want to phase it out entirely, which might explain Greenpeace's "targeting of food companies" and relative lack of apparent interest in biofuels (assuming that's a thing).
- dools 8y ago
  Yes I'm aware that I can search Google for facts.[0] What I'm interested in are the sources that the author is using so that I can read them, and then compare to searches I might conduct myself.[1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0oa3Qiz5tw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0oa3Qiz5tw [1] https://study.com/academy/lesson/comparing-and-contrasting-sources-of-a-text.html https://study.com/academy/lesson/comparing-and-contrasting-s...
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    Saying it that way will be much more helpful for the conversation. When people say something very easy like "Sources or it didn't happen", my normal gut reaction is to think "That person is just trying to waste my time because they have a contrary stance". Even better would be to say something like "Could you post the sources you used because this source[1] seems to say something different". Sometimes when you are honestly trying to convey some information, people who are contrary are just shouting you down. It's usually better to ignore them because otherwise you end up going down a rabbit hole of their choosing. But, at least for me, if I see that someone is genuinely interested in exploring the subject I'll usually go the extra mile and prepare the information I have. Sometimes it leads me to find out I'm wrong, and I'm always grateful for the prompting.
    - bartread 8y ago
      > When people say something very easy like "Sources or it didn't happen", my normal gut reaction is to think "That person is just trying to waste my time because they have a contrary stance". Agree. To me it almost feels like a pre-programmed response/reaction or, at best, something that might be said to try and be funny, which can be frustrating depending on the context.

cbzbc 8y ago

Greenpeace has been targeting non-sustainable practices in biofuel production - and the ill thought out legislation that led to this for at least the last 10 years, so it is factually incorrect to say that they have been 'staying silent'. Palm oil for biofuel/heating constitutes 55% of palm oil imports, but food and feedstock usage accounts for 40-45%, so it's still a significant area of use Understandably a campaign in this particular area is going to be more visible to the end consumer because of the companies that it targets. And everything is political.

Asooka 8y ago

I hear you, but I also don't want any palm oil in my food. What happened to just using butter, lard, sunflower and olive oil? Just don't eat too much of it and it's not a problem.

radicalbyte 8y ago
Palm Oil is dirt cheap.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  And it tastes really good, which is why it's being used. It's a saturated fat that nobody has heard of.

avar 8y ago

I disagree with the pseudo-scientific stance Greenpeace and other similar organizations have about nuclear power, but saying they're to blame for our use of palm oils for biofuels is ridiculous. Sure they campaigned against nuclear, but that doesn't mean they approve of whatever other means the EU has been using as an alternative, as they themselves say on their website[1]. I'm sure if they got their way we wouldn't have nuclear or "bad" biofuels, and would just be paying a higher tax rate to scale up our sustainable energy production. That the EU has been dropping nuclear power without that investment in sustainable energy isn't Greenpeace's fault. 1. https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-eu-unit/en/campaigns/Climate/Transport-oil-and-biofuels/ https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-eu-unit/en/campaigns/Clim...

roenxi 8y ago
We can shuffle the numbers around all you like, but if we don't use cheap energy then more of our resources go to energy production and standards of living will drop. A "higher tax rate" is slight of hand argument for "we'll make the costs so convoluted that no-body will understand the cause". It isn't a solution to the problem of making people's lives more materially comfortable and satisfying. It is all very well to say that orangutans _should_ be more important than a standard of living, but in practice people will say one thing and vote in a completely different way when they are actually tested. Orangutan are not important compared to keeping families struggling between financially viable and non-viable on the good side of the margins.
- arbitrary_name 8y ago
  I'm ok with taking a hit if it means more wildlife.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    I'm ok with going early 1900's if it means we can get down to 1-2 gigatons of carbon a year instead of nearly 40 this year, and probably more than 40 next year, so we can buy some more time until we can start sequestering excess carbon we've put into the environment before stuff starts getting really bad. We are generating 4x the electricity we were in just the early 1970s, that sort of increase isn't sustainable and we're already seeing consequences of our actions. Unless a fleet of alien ships show up in orbit and charitably give us a bunch of fusion reactors... we've got to start making some pretty radical changes in our lives.

dools 8y ago

"It's because Greenpeace is a political organisation, their purpose is to be anti-corporation" Where did you get that from? Greenpeace has a history of working with corporations to improve their practices and promoting the efforts of corporations to engage in sustainable production: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/greener-electronics-2017/ https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/greener-electronics-2... https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability-old/library/best_practices/sustainable_supply_chain/Greenpeace_Brazil_Soya.html https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability-old/libra... http://changeyourtuna.org.au/ http://changeyourtuna.org.au/

dspillett 8y ago

> They target retail brands This is necessary if they want public support because the general public tend to look at matters much further away then immediately under their nose as being nothing they can do anything significant about, so it is hard to get them engaged even if they actually care. Furthermore, from a cynical sounding but unfortunately true PoV: if you can bring an issue down to "this product/company you deal with every day" many social influencers will jump on the band wagon even if they don't really care... It is not specifically that they target retail brands over all other organisations, but that those are the campaigns that get most public pushing & traction so are the ones you are exposed to more commonly. > while staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or through badly conceived regulation. This is demonstrably not true, and I shall prove my point by providing as many well researched references as you have for your assertion... :-) Less facetiously: your own post contradicts this point by mentioning their strong opposition to nuclear power (while I understand their stance I disagree with being as dogmatic: it is dangerous but the danger is understood and (if well managed until other tech is more ready in a generation or two) offers a less damaging solution overall than other practical options in the near/middle term, and some arguments I've seen include significant scientific misunderstanding or misrepresentation). A strong anti-nuclear stance is hardly just going after retail brands.

CathyWest 8y ago

I just don't understand what Greenpeace has against nuclear power. The Chernobyl disaster has very well demonstrated that even the worst case scenario, while it sucks for people, is not at all bad for the environment.

ryanmercer 8y ago
It doesn't matter anyway, nuclear power isn't a solution. At best it's a bandaid. First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and non-lung cancers. Second, it takes about 10 metric tons of raw uranium to make enough low enriched uranium to generate 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. If you take known reserves, and estimated undiscovered reserves, we only have 200ish years worth at current energy demands. Energy demands increase over time, for example we are generating 4x the energy we were in the early 1970s and more and more people are being able to afford electronic devices, if you go adding electric vehicles in worthwhile numbers you'll see a rapid spike as well so if we switched the entire world over to uranium based power, we might have 50 years worth. Even if you then use the waste from those reactors, via a different process like YC funded Oklo Inc is attempting to do using nuclear waste as an energy source, you still might only buy the world a century of clean nuclear energy.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  The amount of fuel that you're quoting assumes that we don't ever reprocess the spent fuel. While the US doesn't do this due to proliferation concerns, it's possible to dramatically increase the longevity of nuclear power by doing so. This is likely what Oklo is doing. All we need are a couple of centuries to develop better technology than nuclear. We don't need it forever. It buys us time until we can develop storage and eliminate the need for fueled baseload power entirely.
- biglenny 8y ago
  >First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and non-lung cancers. Hey buddy, the mining isn't much cleaner for the lithium, the cobalt, the REEs, the copper, or really anything required for PVs or the batteries which store their energy. And at least most of the uranium supply is in developed countries.

tristor 8y ago

It's almost like nuclear energy is cleaner for the environment and more long-term sustainable than burning any sort of carbon based fuel, including biofuels. Who would have thought it would be so? Certainly not Greenpeace.