Like hearing a Rolling Stones number during a chastity belt ad

New book praising biofuels has an unexpected author

Posted by JMG (Guest Contributor) at 1:19 PM on 20 Sep 2007

Read more about: books | energy | biofuels

There are combinations that are just too weird: chocolate cake and grape juice (to steal from an old Dick Van Dyke show), or hearing the Rolling Stones' music used to market chastity belts and abstinence pledges. Or like seeing the Worldwatch Institute's name on a book praising biofuels ... the very fuels Les Brown, WWI's founder, is crusading against.

The gist of the book seems to be, "We need a completely different kind of biofuels than we have or are likely to ever see, but if that better, fairer system came along, it might be good for the poor." In other words, the Les-Brown-less WWI is now providing cover for people who don't give two burps about the poor, but sho' do love them some subsidies. And for people who will be throwing this book around the way Bush threw around Colin Powell's notorious UN speech on Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction."

For story: Like hearing a Rolling Stones number during a chastity belt ad
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Good intentions abound

but results are what count. There are, as expected, opposing groups in the African poverty debate. One says that without good governance and some form of democracy you are spinning your wheels. I don't know of anyone against improving the health of the poor, although some groups throw contraception out of the solution set. Some think that small farms are the way out, others say small farms lock poor farmers into poverty ...and on it goes. I sure don't have any answers, but there are plenty of recent examples demonstrating that without democracy and proprety rights, biofuels tend to consume biodiversity and give the powerful an incentive to steal land from and enslave the poor (totally unexpected of course).

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 1:42 PM on 20 Sep 2007

Indeed, you can pave a broad highway with them

But where does it lead?

The 5% Project

by JMG at 8:35 PM on 20 Sep 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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