The global wood pellet “biomass,” “biofuels” industry
The multi-billion dollar wood pellet industry is rapidly cutting down what’s left of Earth’s critically needed forests. “Converting” and “harvesting” — which is to say cutting down — living, carbon-sequestering, oxygen-producing forests to make wood pellets to burn for energy generation is literal ecocide. Or to use the latest vernacular, “Killing the climate.”
Destroying carbon-sequestering forests, to burn them. CLICK to ENLARGE.
Orwellian language is integral and essential to the “biofuels” and “biomass” industries sales pitch.
Propagandistic names are used to mislead the public, in the hopes they won’t realize that accelerating the destruction of Earth’s best terrestrial carbon sinks – our living forests — is ecocide, and also ecological suicide for us humans.
At the rate we’re going, we profit-driven humans will soon learn the hard way that we can’t breathe money.
WATCH VIDEO: “Why Biomass Burning Isn’t a Climate Solution”
So-called “biomasss” is touted by governments around the world as a “renewable” and “net-zero carbon” alternative to fossil fuels – – but the opposite is true; biomass, a so-called “bio-fuel,” is a forest-destroying, profit-driven industry that is responsible for more net carbon emissions than burning coal.
“Biomass” – not renewable & dirtier than coal
The so-called “biomass” industry, often in the form of wood pellets made from felled living trees, is being sold to the public by governments around the world. The U.S., European nations, South Korea, Canada, Japan, and southeast Asia are either selling or buying deforestation. Even as the industry sells it as a net-zero carbon alternative to fossil fuels. The reality is quite the opposite. Cutting down forests and burning them for fuel is actually dirtier — emits more greenhouse gas — than burning coal does.
Cutting down more forests to burn in the 21st century– can anyone say, “climate suicide?”
Like most corporate strategies for climate change mitigation while barreling full steamshovel ahead, the benefits of burning wood materials — especially from recently living forests, including old-growth forests (!) — are exaggerated, and the environmental and climate damage is downplayed, ignored, and even flat-out lied about. And why not? — wood pellets have quickly become a multi-billion dollar global industry.
Wood pellet maker Eviva’s claim, “being good for the planet… all nonsense”
Article by Justin Catanoso, Dec. 5, 2022
Photo: Justin Catanoso, Mongabay
EXCERPT:
What I observed here while reporting for Mongabay on Nov. 3, 2022, corroborated what a biomass industry whistleblower had told me:
“We take giant, whole trees. We don’t care where they come from. The notion of sustainably managed forests is nonsense. We can’t get wood into the mills fast enough.”
An onsite driver for the Mudd Trucking company confirmed to Mongabay that he was taking the Edenton load to Enviva’s wood pellet plant in Ahoskie, North Carolina, 37 miles (60 k) away. He also told me he would make 3-4 more round-trips that November day. A parade of trucks had been making runs to Ahoskie from the site for 2 weeks, and would do so until the dense, biodiverse forest — a sponge against coastal flooding, and a haven for wildlife — was gone.
READ Mongabay ARTICLE: https://news.mongabay.com/2022/12/envivas-biomass-lies-whistleblower-account/
Wood pellet industry – destroying carbon-capturing forests
No matter that numerous independent (of industry) scientific studies have proven what’s painfully obvious, that these now widespread industrial deforestation practices do far more harm any supposed good, due to the massive carbon GHG emissions from burning trees for so-called “biomass”, and exacerbated by the loss of a forest’s future carbon sequestration. A felled tree, burned, quickly releases its carbon into the atmosphere and will never again capture carbon, nor produce oxygen. Now multiple this effect by millions of felled trees.
WATCH VIDEO, “Why Biomass Burning Isn’t a Climate Solution”:
The Biomass Climate Hoax: shipping southern forests overseas to burn
June 10, 2023, by Alexandra Marvar
EXCERPTS:
The biomass industry is growing fast because, even though it relies on clear-cutting forests, it calls itself renewable. According to Nicole Rycroft, Executive Director of the environmental nonprofit Canopy, it’s anything but. Our planet is grappling with two ecological crises: unprecedented biodiversity loss and climate change. Biomass, she says, is fueling both.
…ecologists are concerned about sweeping impacts. Looking at birds alone, there has been a dramatic decline in species found where biomass logging dominates.
The expansion of biomass in the U.S. is also a threat to public health. While its toxic byproducts are regulated, Environmental Integrity Project data shows that, in 2017, one in three wood pellet plants violated permitted limits. Even at legal limits, communities near these facilities have reported it necessary to wear masks outdoors.
Read SECL Article: https://www.southernenvironment.org/news/the-biomass-climate-hoax/
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