permaculture

["Dylan Ford" <dford@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

Mike - Point well taken, but there is currently almost no interruption of
the flow of this organic material into landfills. To get any advantage out
of this material is better than getting none, and the economic and political
carrot of getting some energy has a better chance of registering with TPTB
than all of the well-reasoned arguments for replenishing our soils, saving
our environment, reducing our footprint, blah, blah, blah, arguments I have
heard for thirty or more years and which have changed nothing. After all the
exciting talk, discussion, analysis, etc., millions of Americans went out
and traded in their toyota corollas for SUV's.

A few years ago an international panel of scientists got together to predict
how long the planet earth would support higher lifeforms if we didn't change
our ways. The details are hazy in my mind, but it seems to me there was some
disagreement and the group polarized into two distinct subgroups - those
that thought we had twenty years and those who felt it was more like forty
or fifty. If one accepts these figures as being even near true, it is more
important to do something imperfect (but better) right now than to continue
speculating about something better that has no economic legs.

In any case, any salvaging of organic matter from the waste stream would
yield immediate benefits. Locally produced ethanol is preferable to buying
and burning more oil, if only somewhat. Whether ethanol can replace 15% or
30% of our current oil usage, that is still a hell of a lot less oil to be
fought over, to be spilled into our seas, to be pumped out of and spilled
onto our wildlife refuges, to be politically blackmailed over. I believe
ethanol production should be a transitional part of a multi-faceted
solution, and I believe it should absolutely be decentralized. It should be
carried out by municipalities, just as garbage collection and recycling of
glass, metal and plastics are. It is a start on curbing our oil use and
keeping this wealth of organic matter out of toxic landfills. I certainly
have never suggested or promoted growing crops for energy, or robbing farms
of a single stick of straw.

I too prefer my carbon sequestered in the soils and the lifeforms of forests
and prairies and farms than spewed into the atmosphere, but carbohydrate is
a renewable commodity. Also, if use of  this ethanol technology is not
limited to corrupt corporations it represents local jobs and money kept in
the community.

dylan







From: "Mike Snow" <

> I like to think I have a decent grasp on the need for compromise, and on
> the point that "everything gardens".  But I do wonder about implementing a
> plan, on such a large and potentially long-term scale, that takes an
> element (the carbon chains that make up the ethanol) out of a system.
> Take carbohydrates out of a biological cycle?  What would that do (not a
> rhetorical question).
>
> I'm left wondering how to structure incentives for ethanol's use as a
> transition fuel.  What might that look like in serious legislation?  Or
> perhaps how might we decentralize the process, so we're transporting a
> final product and not the basic materials... Perhaps the dailykos knows.


Dylan Ford is the author of the proposal at www.ideaforpresident.com , a
website devoted to an idea that could provide an avenue to address pollution
issues, food safety, social justice, prison reform and healthcare.