EU to establish full carbon emissions

iol scitech
October 13 2011 at 10:20pm
By Gerard Wynn
REUTERS

In a world of limited land and a growing population decisions taken in Europe can cause farmers to wield chainsaws in a tropical rainforest.

London - The European Union's efforts to establish the full carbon emissions from burning bio-energy is an all but impossible task which illustrates the difficulty of trying to cut humankind's environmental impact, which first has to be measured.

The complexity of trying to link energy crops including corn for ethanol on one side of the planet with carbon emissions on the other is a tangled web of cause and effects which might recall an equation in atmospheric physics.

But a fuller measure of carbon emissions is important, even an inaccurate number beats ignoring the issue, especially given the lessons from a related food versus fuel battle which sparked a global backlash against liquid biofuels three years ago.

Read more