Europe's Bogus Green Economy Leaves a Trail of Destruction

If you believe that doing the right thing for the environment is to follow governmental advice and feed wood pellets to your pellet stove/ wood-burning stove, you are buying yet another corporate lie they sold you! Screech to a halt right here and ditch the pellets while I spill the beans...

Forest-based biomass is no panacea. Rather it is an ecological disaster disguised as 'sustainable' replacement to fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas) and nuclear energy by our governing puppets. Let me be clear about this: by buying wood pellets, Europeans are contributing to the catastrophic deforestation of Europe, Canada, Brazil and southeastern America, and the utter destruction of (mostly) untouched primeval natural habitats. Besides biofuels are also responsible for Indonesia's vast deforestation, in which case the lowland tropical forests are being eradicated to make way for palm oil monocultures (for bioethanol).

'Struggle Between Heaven and Earth', Mount Rarau, Romania, by Robert U., via National Geographic

Back to the West, not only are mature trees chainsawed en masse in order to produce virgin lumber pellets, but every wildlife component of the woodland is affected too: the undergrowth, flora and fauna, not to mention soil erosion, aquifer and marsh disruptions. Road infrastructures, lumber mills and processing plants effect the landscape further, totally transforming it beyond recognition. And from there onwards is an open-door policy for further looting of natural resources under all its guises and the transformation of natural woodlands into man-made wastelands and monocultures.

"... the benefits of biomass burning for carbon emissions may be bogus, while its consequences for forest ecology are becoming all too evident. The threat to the continent's forests is big and immediate." - Fred Pearce, Up in Flames

To put it simply, woody biomass is Europe's own legalised EU-funded Borneo jungle disaster right on our doorstep - or a few hundreds miles away, depending on where we live. The demand for biomass was engineered by Big Corporate in collusion with governments under the thinly-veiled green revolution nonsense purported by Agenda 21, Al Gore and consorts, in a way that has nothing to do with ecology. It accelerates further the destruction of our planet via lucrative bogus schemes. This is nothing but a big bucks ecological disaster!

Saruman's oeuvre? Enviva facility in Ahoskie, North Carolina (US), supplies Drax power plant (UK)

Prime ancient trees are being felled in places like France's Cévennes, Slovakia's Poloniny National Park, and the Carpathian old-growth forests of Romania all the way to Poland. Likewise across the Atlantic, North Carolina wetland and hardwood forests are reduced to those moulded, compacted sawdust pellets that are then shipped all the way to Europe to produce energy. According to Fred Pearce who conducted research on the wastefulness of biomass, 'Almost half of wood harvested in the EU is now used for energy, while 60 per cent of the renewable energy is generated by biomass burning for electricity and heating. It supplies about five per cent of EU energy needs.' The figures add up to an ecological disaster!

"... this sector [Southeastern US] has been driving the destructuion of wetland forests and conversion of hardwood forests into pine plantations in an area that has already lost most of its unique wetland hardwood forests." - EU Bioenergy

The logged trees are trucked to the plants to be processed: dewatered and pulverised to sawdust - yes to sawdust - then compacted to a paste - yes to a paste - and spewed out into pellets. The process is wasteful, CO2-intensive, and therefore an aggravating factor to climate change. Thus how governments justify biomass as sustainable is beyond me. Wood as renewable energy is another idiosyncrasy because clear-cut old-growth (i.e. the chopping down of secular trees) contradicts the very notion of renewability, itself skewered under a short-term fast-turnaround natural-resource-intensive model that the industry operates under.

Photography by David Marcu (Romania), via Unsplash

This makes UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change and France's Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy (to name just two) farcical by name and by nature since they are indeed, like other fellow EU member states - and in compliance with EU's bonkers legislation on renewable energy - to be held accountable (alongside the EU technocrats) for the destruction of European and Pan-American forests.

"Using forests to produce energy is like pouring gasoline to put out a fire." - Larry Edwards, Greenpeace

Meanwhile resilient yet vulnerable protected ecosystems that have survived to this day are already or soon-to-be getting loggers' attention, and this is bad news. The 8,000-year-old Białowieża Forest stretching down the border between Poland and Belarus is Europe's very last primeval European forest, and home to the European bison and a plethora of remarkable pedunculate oaks - some of which have even been individually named as if they were pets. Yet despite its UNESCO World Heritage protection, the forest is under threat:-

"The property protects a diverse and rich wildlife of which 59 mammal species, over 250 bird, 13 amphibian, 7 reptile and over 12,000 invertebrate species. The iconic symbol of the property is the European Bison: approximately 900 individuals in the whole property which make almost 25% of the total world’s population and over 30% of free-living animals. " - UNESCO 

Don't fall prey to governmental garb, they're the ones promoting the destruction of our woodlands! Do yourself and the Earth a favour: ditch woody biomass and stay away from the catchment area of power plants fuelled by such! Spread the word around and share this article.


Further Resources:

• The Uncontacted vs. The Disconnected by La Baguette Magique relates the losing battle of the Guarani Tribe against Big Corporate in Brazil
• Fuelling a BioMess: Why Burning Trees for Energy Will Harm People, the Climate and Forests , a comprehensive 40-page report by Greenpeace
• Up in Flames - How Biomass Burning Wrecks Europe's Forests, a 16-page case study report by author and journalist Fred Pearce
• Green Invasion by Fred Pearce, via EU Bioenergy
• [Case Study] Slovakia - Up in Flames ibid.
• [Case Study] Gardanne, France - How Biomass Burning Wrecks Europe's Forests, ibid.
• [Case Study] Romania - Up in Flames, ibid.
• [Case Study] DRAX, UK - Up in Flames, ibid.
• Bioenergy and Social Injustice in Southeastern US by Linde Zuidema, ibid.
• Uncovering the Truth: Investigating the Destruction of Precious Wetland Forests by Dogwood Alliance 
• American Companies are Shipping Millions of Trees to Europe, and It's a Renewable Energy Nightmare by ThinkProgress
• Menaces sur la Forêt Française : Quand l'Industrie Biomasse Débarque en France et en Europe, a French documentary (teaser) by Benoît Grimont, via Réseau pour les Alternatives Forestières.

Driving Motown Back on Track

Detroit's road to recovery will need more than a Berry Gordy song and the pep-talk speech of a presidential candidate but big things start small. Detroit stands forlornly like a forcefully doomed industrial Gotham and has become a purveyor of choice to the Urbex back catalogue.

Once hailed as Motor City, the Michigan automobile heartland revolutionarily put wheels on America and made it mobile and packed its car radios full of smoochy love songs that engendered the next generation of Americans. But the city has long lost its manufacturing panache. Trouble crept up in the late 1950s with the closing down of the Packard Motor Company, already a sign of the restructuring automobile sector, and trouble never left town. Detroit has now become the stuff of nightmares: a major redundant ghost city potholed in limbo, lumbered with high unemployment and poverty rates slammed against a high exodus rate, resulting in thousands of empty, unsaleable private properties and public amenities crumbling away with neglect and the passing of time.

Flower House Detroit installation, 16-18th October 2015

It is difficult for someone like me to remain indifferent to the human, economic and historical tragedy of a city like Detroit. By the same token, it would be easy for most to look away and drive past and write it off with the strike of a pen, which is exactly what has already been done when the city declared itself bankrupt in July 2013. Yet rather than look at it as a town doomed to decay further, some - mainly artists and visionary entrepreneurs - see it as a sleeping giant waiting to be jump-started back to life, with sorry looks, decrepit figure and raw talent to be capitalised upon.

In the political realm, it would be easier for a presidential candidate to bypass Detroit and aim for sunnier climes and shinier streets than chance stopping over to address an audience of would-be voters in a once Democratic, Trade Union-led, working-class stronghold. You would also have to pen a speech - because in its current state of abandonment, Detroit would indeed require a tailored speech. Donald Trump and his VP acolyte Mike Pence hit the brakes nonetheless and stepped in. The Republican candidate never shies away from a challenge and his speech in Detroit was invigorating and well received. It stated the stats and packed the punches. But above all, it put Detroit firmly back on the (road)map. Trump believes in Making America Great Again (his motto!) and with employment his utmost priority, as with Americanism over globalism, the billionaire businessman aims to address full-on the rigged economy that has laid off American manufacturing in its swathes, and he has vowed that the renaissance shall start in Detroit.

Flower House Detroit ibid.

I believe in purpose, I believe in work. I believe in a country that is industrious and autonomous, with a strong economy, and relies on homegrown: strong agriculture and manufacturing base. I believe in a government that is non-intrusive and empowers its citizens through free enterprise and the spirit that goes with it. I believe in minimal bureaucracy and lighter taxes. I believe in hope and faith and dream and opportunity and feasibility for all. I believe in quality education and those good old-fashioned Christian family values. I also believe in Law and Order and national sovereignty. Detroit, America and the West at large have long been forced to relinquish what used to make them functional and prosperous, and there they are now - to different degrees - shadows of their former selves.

Like Mr. Trump I have faith and refuse to accept what current governances are forcing us to accept as inevitable: widespread unemployment, low-paid ungratifying jobs, large-scale imports, foreign takeover of national ressources and assets, warmongering politics and meddling into the Middle East affairs, and redundancy of talent and creativity in order to fit the tight uncomfortable mould that we are being forced into by the oligarchs. I believe that Detroit can and will resurrect under a constructive, populist, work-centric governance. And I might as well say it with flowers... because big things start small.

Flower House Detroit ibid.