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Ear to the Ground

It’s Industry Over Environment in New ‘Bioeconomy Blueprint’

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Posted on Apr 27, 2012
futureatlas.com (CC BY 2.0)

Critics say a new White House-sponsored program aimed at encouraging the development of “green” solutions to energy and manufacturing problems is a green light for corporate giants like Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Monsanto and Dow to develop the “bioscience” industry without government oversight.

Eric Hoffman, a spokesperson for the international NGO Friends of the Earth, said the new program—the National Bioeconomy Blueprint—prioritizes economic concerns over protections for human rights and the environment. Only one of the five objectives put forth in the framework specifically mentions the environment.

That statement reads like an afterthought, treating human and environmental needs as secondary to business concerns by calling on government to “develop and reform regulations to reduce barriers, increase the speed and predictability of regulatory processes, and reduce costs while protecting human and environmental health.”   

Below, critics of the program underscore the dangers inherent in ecosystem-based industries and the opportunities they provide to politicians looking to boost their careers by appearing friendly to the environment. —ARK

Inter Press Service:

The report [published Thursday by the international humanitarian group Global Forest Coalition], “Bio-economy Versus Biodiversity”, notes the spiking demand for land across the world for both food production and human habitat. This has not only led to increased land-based conflict, the report suggests, but has also increased global hunger.

“Without reducing consumption and demand for energy and products, the sheer scale on which biomass would have to produced [sic] to meet the demands of a global bio-economy would severely exacerbate these problems,” the report states.

Those technologies currently being lauded in the attempt to move beyond fossil fuels – such as the use of algae in creating electricity – are risky or as yet untested on a wide scale, warns the report. As such, the technologies that would undoubtedly be used in the immediate future – and almost certainly beyond – would be relatively dirty and wasteful, such as burning biomass.

“The bio-economy approach offers politicians in industrialized countries an opportunity to be seen to be doing something about meeting ill-defined ‘renewable energy targets’, while maximizing opportunities for economic growth and securing a constant supply of energy,” the report warns. “There is precious little concern about the environment, or about impacts in other countries, apart from the usual platitudes about providing jobs.”

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EmileZ's avatar

By EmileZ, April 29, 2012 at 11:44 pm Link to this comment

Anything but solar right????

We can’t install a new grid.

Where could we possibly find the cash when we have BIG DEBT.

Also, it might be, yes that’s right, a JOB KILLER!!!

No, not a profit killer, yes that’s right, a JOB KILLER!!!

Well, so long beautiful Earth, it’s been nice.

Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown - Goin’ Down Slow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMvPUHWm52g&feature=related

P.S. It’s probably for the best, I wouldn’t want my grandchildren to have to live on a socialist planet.

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prisnersdilema's avatar

By prisnersdilema, April 28, 2012 at 9:29 pm Link to this comment

3/31/2015.

Remember that date. It is real, not like the fake date of doom 12/31/2012. Not a
date to argue about, incessantly on late night talk shows, and history channel
specials designed to titillate and provide a visual roller coaster of emotional
variation, for bored couch potatoes.

Still the news stories of today, are the white house correspondence dinner, and the
collapse of a sports bar tent in St. Louis, killing one.

There is no mention of the cataclysm of Fukishima, indeed its been hidden away
for months, the mainstream media has done its job, of containment for the
corporate Reich.

There will be walls of disinformation erected and fought over, by the media, at
each crucial new awareness of the public that information that could have
protected it, is being withheld.

Radiation, is a topic difficult to grasp by the great mass of American’s focused, on
the other things that the mainstream media present to them. The majority of
American’s don’t possess even a basic understanding of science, or chemistry.

Radiation of this sort does not just disappear. Once it enters the food chain, in the
Pacific it will begin concentrating, as it heads toward the top.  Concentrating in the
fish that people eat, the milk they drink, and elevating the back ground radiation.
As a leading Japanese scientist put it, we have had a nuclear war without the
bombs.

Just what will the final outcome be? Professor Kunihiko Takeda PhD, Vice
chancellor of Chubu University, Institute of Science, 27 years at Ashai Chemical
Laboratories, 5 years director of Uranium enrichment.  In an article published on
line he has stated that no one will be living in Japan after 3/31/2012, due to the
cumulative effects of radiation.

Chernobyl caused nearly a million deaths, from cancer. But Chernobyl’s radiation
was contained relatively quickly, under a concrete sarcophagus.

Fukishima is not contained. Eventually though the death of the Pacific Ocean will
be hard to hide, with billions of Becquerel’s, pumped into it, and plans to pour sea
water directly onto the remaining reactors to cool them. Then pouring that water
back into the Pacific.

So I say to each, reporter, each news director, who has betrayed the public trust,
how dare you, when this news was crucial, to save thousands of lives you did
nothing.  And nothing is all you deserve.

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By berniem, April 27, 2012 at 3:30 pm Link to this comment

Gee, and I thought all of those thousands of comercials telling me how concerned and progressive our esteemed corporations are were true!

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Blueokie's avatar

By Blueokie, April 27, 2012 at 1:55 pm Link to this comment

Shockingly, ObamaRahma sides with criminality once again.

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