30 Fairmont Park Lane S
Lethbridge, AB
T1K 7H7
Phone: (403) 328-1804
Sunday, November 16, 2003
The Editor
The Lethbridge Herald
P.O. Box 670
Lethbridge
AB, T1J 3Z7
Dear Editor:
I almost found myself agreeing with David Suzuki (Better living through pig iron, 03/11/16, A4) on greenhouse gas management. He objects to Canada’s alleged support of the Plantar scheme to grow trees in Brazil for the production of charcoal to produce iron. I visited his website which led me to a disturbing level of inconsistency and hypocrisy with respect to concepts based on the use of biomass for energy.
The Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, Pembina Institute and Sierra Club wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in June this year which mentioned the Plantar project as a bad example. One line from that letter says “we urge you to safeguard the “permanence” of sinks projects, i.e. credits that are earned by taking carbon out of the atmosphere should only be valid if the carbon stays out of the atmosphere”.
While these organizations are castigating the Plantar project, they are strongly supporting similar concepts in Canada. They encourage the production of ethanol and oil from food crops in Canada as fuel for our cars and trucks. They enthusiastically promote the capture and use of methane from decaying landfills. These concepts, when applied in Canada, are claimed to be highly desirable renewable energy from biomass.
The Plantar project is essentially the same renewable energy concept. None of these schemes focus on permanent removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
Visit Computare at www.computare.org, and think about climate change strategy.
Yours truly,
Duane Pendergast