Message #59

[Xiao Jie]

Reel, I don`t dispute what you are saying. What I`m saying is that there`s big money behind Western environmental groups. Really big money and yes they do have influence over Mr and Mrs Average Citizen.

And I'm saying that in the case of biofuels, environmental groups have limited impact on policy as it is set by industry and government lobbying with the end goal of corporate profit rather than environmental improvement.  Biofuels are not the result of grass roots environmentalism, nor mercenary environmental groups, and certainly not UN policy, since it runs directly counter to UN goals.

You can identify grass roots because it will try to balance social and environmental, mercenary because it will ignore social for environmental, UN because it will favour social, and corporate because it will favour economic growth and likely not social or environmental (at least not directly).

I can see how you would mistake this for mercenary since it ignores the social repercussions, but there really aren't any substantial environmental benefits either.

I read an article about biofuels in the Edmonton Journal last year. It stated the obvious repercussions of biofuels. The most obvious being how it is lowering world food stocks and not really helping the environment.