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BIOFUELS AND CLIMATE CHANGE: A CURE THAT MAKES THE DISEASE WORSE
Vandana Shiva
FEBRUARY 2008 (IPS) - False solutions to the climate crisis, like biofuels, will actually
aggravate the problem while exacerbating inequality, hunger, and
poverty, writes Vandana Shiva, author and international campaigner
for women and the environment.
Biofuels contribute to the very
global warming that they are supposed to reduce. And yet these
biofuels are treated as a clean development mechanism for reducing
emissions in the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol totally avoided the material challenge of stopping
activities that lead to higher emissions and the political challenge
of regulating the polluters and making them pay in accordance with
principles adopted at the Rio Earth Summit. Instead, Kyoto introduced
a system of emissions trading which in effect rewards the polluters by
assigning them rights to degrade the atmosphere and allowing trading
in these rights. Today, the emissions trading market has reached 30 billion dollars and is expected to reach 1 trillion. Meanwhile carbon
dioxide emissions continue to increase, as do profits from polluting
industrial activities.
/NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN AUSTRALIA, CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, CZECH
REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, UNITED STATES, OR UNITED KINGDOM/ (END/2008)
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