Anuradha Mittal
amittal@oaklandinstitute.org; +1 510 469-5228
Eco-Skies: The Global Rush for Aviation Biofuel
Fuel from French fries and land grabs for biofuel are not the solution
A new report from the Oakland Institute, Eco-Skies: The Global Rush for Aviation Biofuel, cautions against the ambitious goals of the aviation industry to reduce emissions by 2050. The report finds that the pursuit of this goal will bring an unprecedented expansion into biofuel production, more than likely in poorer countries, and will involve the acceleration of land acquisitions already threatening the lives and livelihoods of people in developing countries.
On the surface, the idea of a strategy that relies heavily on renewable and ostensibly environmentally-friendly biofuel sounds like a positive step for the airline industry. If only it were based in fact and there was evidence to indicate future success. This new report finds that both the potential environmental impact and toll on human lives has not been adequately factored into assessments of this new goal. On the contrary, the pursuit of biofuels for the aviation industry's fuel needs raises serious questions about the type of new environmental and human disasters this path could lead to.
A huge amount of fuel is needed to fly planes. Currently, biofuel is too scarce and expensive for serious commercial use. Lukas Ross, OI Fellow and author of the report, acknowledges that airlines are caught between economic constraints and environmental problems with fossil fuels and CO2 emissions. Airlines would like to see biofuels as the answer to both challenges, but, Ross says, "given the mind-boggling land requirements needed to meet the industry's CO2 target, aviation biofuel has a price tag that neither people nor the planet should have to pay."
To meet current aviation needs--let alone future increases in demand--it would take 270 million hectares of jatropha, produced on an area roughly the equivalent of one-third of Australia, or 25 times the amount expected to exist in 2015.
Even a quarter of the required area equals a Texas-size chunk of land that would no longer be available to grow food. Considering the sheer quantities of biofuel required compared to the amounts that currently exist, it is impossible to look into the future and guarantee that the drive to procure commercial quantities will not result in unsustainable, food security-threatening land grabs.
Perhaps to alleviate these fears, the airline industry founded the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group (SAFUG), and signed a nonbinding pledge to only pursue biofuels in a way that protects biodiversity, does not compete with food, and ensures significant life cycle GHG reductions.
Although the pledge sounds good on paper, there are already reasonable questions about the social and environmental costs of the biofueled flights that have already flown (1,500 as of May 2012), and even more pointed questions about the possible costs if aviation biofuels are ever fully commercialized.
The new report also looks at the drawbacks of used cooking oil conversion as a source of commercial aviation fuel. The idea that planes can be powered with the same oil that McDonald's uses to make its fries makes sustainability something novel and convenient that requires nothing in the way of lifestyle change.
The truth is that in 2010 the US produced 1,403.6 million pounds of used cooking oil-- converting every drop into aviation biofuel would still only produce about 185 million gallons. Given that in 2012 the US alone consumed roughly 21 billion gallons of jet fuel, this means that diverting all the used cooking oil in the US would keep American planes in the air for less than three days.
Such an enormous gap between potential demand and available supply means that no airline can seriously contemplate used cooking oil as a path to sustainability.
"The airline industry, hungry for price stability and a green image, is in danger of creating an unprecedented demand for biofuel that could have catastrophic consequences for land rights, food security, and GHG emissions," said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute. "The production of biofuels is now the largest single purpose of land deals in the developing world. As low-income countries are encouraged to embrace commercial agriculture as a path out of poverty, a host of problems have erupted. Our research has exposed how poorly conceived economic development plans have led to greater food insecurity, forced displacement, and environmental damage."
Eco-Skies thus gives analysts in the airline industry a warning to look closely at the data before the developing world is shouldering the human and environmental cost of poorly conceived solutions, yet once again.
The Oakland Institute is a policy think tank whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic and environmental issues in both national and international forums.
68 'Summer of Heat' Activists Arrested in NYC Protesting Citgroup's Fossil Fuel Financing
"Citi's business model is frying our planet," said one campaigner.
Scores of activists were arrested Friday during a protest outside Citigroup's New York City headquarters, where demonstrators condemned what organizers called the megabank's "racist investments devastating Black and brown communities" and fueling the worsening climate emergency.
Around 1,000 people including environmental leaders from the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana gathered at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan's Financial District, where they rallied before marching to "demand that Wall Street stop funding the fossil fuel projects causing environmental devastation in mostly Black and brown communities in the Gulf South and across the globe."
The march ended at Citigroup's headquarters on the west side of Lower Manhattan, where organizers from New York Communities for Change said 68 people were arrested. The group said a total of 259 activists have been arrested during ongoing Summer of Heat on Wall Street protests, which it organized along with Stop the Money Pipeline, Climate Defenders, and Planet Over Profit.
"On Monday, climate activists from the Gulf South and allies held a roving speak out in front of financial institutions backing the fossil fuel industry, including KKR, BlackRock, and Bank of America," New York Communities for Change said. "On Wednesday, protesters held a civil disobedience action in front of the insurance conglomerate Chubb, which insures petrochemical projects destroying the climate in the Gulf South and around the globe."
One of the protest's organizers, Roishetta Ozane—who founded the Vessel Project of Louisiana—said that "projects that kill our communities like Freeport LNG (liquefied natural gas), Cameron LNG, Corpus Christi LNG, and others would not exist without the backing of financial institutions like Citigroup."
"Money made from them is blood money," Ozane added. "Since they destroy our homes, we're coming to pay them a visit. We will break this cycle of violence and exploitation now because later is too late. We want Citigroup to stop funding fossil fuels and to stop hurting our communities and our families."
As Stop the Money Pipeline coordinator Alec Connon explained in an opinion piece published earlier this month by Common Dreams:
Since the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015, Citi has provided $204.46 billion in financing to the company's most rapidly developing new coal, oil, and gas fields. Remarkably, Citi has provided more money to those oil and gas companies than even JPMorgan Chase―the bank that climate activists like to call the 'Doomsday Bank.'
To be clear, I'm talking here only about the financing Citi has provided for companies developing new oil and gas reserves, not merely investing in infrastructure to keep the oil pumping from existing reserves. When we take into account financing to all fossil fuel companies, Citi has provided a little shy of $400 billion to coal, oil, and gas companies since 2015.
Citigroup contends that it is "supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy through our net zero commitments and our $1 trillion sustainable finance goal," and that its "approach reflects the need to transition while also continuing to meet global energy needs."
However, Climate Defenders organizing director Marlena Fontes countered that "Citi's business model is frying our planet."
"Every credible climate scientist says that we can't afford to put one more penny into fossil fuels, but Citi is the number one funder of fossil fuel expansion in the world," Fontes added. "Until Citi stops funding fossil fuels, they can expect resistance from everyday people like us who want our children to be able to play outside without coughing on wildfire smoke or getting sick from deadly heatwaves."
GOP Attack on Biodiversity, Climate 'Sticks Finger in the Eye of American People'
Critics of a House appropriations bill that guts environmental agencies warn it's a sign of what the Republicans will do if they retake the Senate and the presidency next year.
Democrats and watchdog groups reacted with outrage on Friday as a U.S. House environmental subcommittee led by Republicans approved an appropriations bill that would reduce funding for two federal agencies and limit their ability to protect the environment.
The House Appropriations Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee voted to advance a bill to weaken the regulatory capacities of the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), cutting funding for conservation, climate action, national parks, and environmental justice initiatives.
"This bill sticks a finger in the eye of the American people who care deeply about clean air, climate change, endangered species, and responsible use of public lands," said Greta Anderson, deputy director of Western Watersheds Project. "It's a nasty wishlist to defund the priorities of protecting a livable future."
The fiscal year 2025 bill proposes a 20% cut to the EPA's annual budget, from $9.2 billion to $7.4 billion, including a $749 million cut to state and tribal assistance grants. It also proposes reductions to many Interior agency budgets, including a $210 million cut to the National Park Service and a $144 million cut to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Taking aim at the government's ability to regulate industry, most of the Republicans' spending allocations are below fiscal year 2024 and almost all of them are below the amount requested by the Biden administration.
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, said in a statement that the proposed EPA cut was "irresponsible" and that she was "greatly disappointed and frustrated" by the bill, which "completely disregards the reality of a warming planet and ignores the need for us to do more, not less."
Pingree's Democratic colleague, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the full appropriations committee, agreed.
The bill "promotes dirty energy, taking the side of fossil fuel companies and those who deny the scientific reality rather than address the escalating risk to our economy and national security presented by the changing climate and growing number of extreme weather events," DeLauro said in the statement.
Critics of the bill also objected to the large number of "poison-pill" riders that seek to undo Biden administration rules and undermine the Endangered Species Act by naming specific animals for which listing can't be funded. Per a Trump-era Interior rule, the legislation also delists most gray wolf populations from the ESA.
"This proposal is a hatchet job of disastrous proportion that in an unprecedented scale, targets our nation's most imperiled species and the law saving them from extinction," Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations at Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement.
The Republicans' bill includes proposed reductions to funding for clean water infrastructure projects, which Food and Water Watch (FWW) said was a step in the wrong direction—water and sewer systems need huge infusions of money just to meet current water quality standards.
"The proposed cuts would leave many with unsafe water and exacerbate the nation’s water affordability crisis, adding more pressure on household water bills at a time when families are already grappling with soaring costs for essential services," Mary Grant, a FWW campaign director, said in a statement, calling safe water "non-negotiable."
Grant said that to safeguard Americans' clean water from "foolishly political annual appropriations battles," Congress should pass the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, And Reliability (WATER) Act—a call she also made last year, when the same subcommittee advanced a similar bill.
The full appropriations committee will consider the bill on July 9. If the bill passes through the committee and then the full chamber, as last year's version did, it's unlikely to make headway in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate. However, critics of the bill warned that it's a sign of what the Republicans will do if they retake the Senate and the presidency.
Earlier this month, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump said that he plans to gut federal agencies dealing with climate, such as the Interior Department. A union of EPA workers rebuked Trump for the remarks.
Supreme Court Refuses to Rescue Prison-Bound Steve Bannon
When he's done serving his four-month sentence for flouting congressional subpoenas, the former top Trump adviser faces a federal trial over the We Build the Wall scam.
Steve Bannon, a onetime senior adviser to former U.S. President Donald Trump who was convicted of defying congressional subpoenas related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, must report to prison Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his 11th-hour bid to avert his four-month sentence.
In a single-sentence order with no public dissents, the Supreme Court stated that Bannon's "application for release pending appeal presented to the chief justice and by him referred to the court is denied."
In July 2022, a federal jury found Bannon guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. That October, he was sentenced to four months in prison and fined $6,500. Bannon has remained free pending appeals and has benefited from a pause imposed by Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee.
David Schoen, an attorney for Bannon, toldThe Washington Post on Friday: "I fully believe the conviction will be reversed and it is a shame to see it mishandled like this. He never should be going to jail for even a day."
However, Bannon not only faces four months behind bars for flouting Congress, another federal trial awaits him over his alleged conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection with the
We Build the Wall fundraising scam.