What a surprise: If you subsidize something, you get more of it. In the EU, there are financial incentives for generating energy from renewable sources. Trees are a renewable resource, true enough, but I doubt that the Eurocrats intended to subsidize the massive destruction of forests.
Protected forests are being indiscriminately felled across Europe to meet the EU's renewable energy targets, according to an investigation by the conservation group Birdlife.
Up to 65% of Europe's renewable output currently comes from bioenergy, involving fuels such as wood pellets and chips, rather than wind and solar power.
Bioenergy fuel is supposed to be harvested from residue such as forest waste but, under current legislation, European bioenergy plants do not have to produce evidence that their wood products have been sustainably sourced.
Birdlife found logging taking place in conservation zones such as Poloniny national park in eastern Slovakia and in Italian riverside forests around Emilia-Romagna, where it said it had been falsely presented as flood-risk mitigation.
[...] Jori Sihvonen, the biofuels officer at Transport and Environment, which co-authored the report, said: "It is easy to fall into thinking that all bioenergy is sustainable, but time and again we see some forms of it can be worse for society, the natural environment and, in the case of burning land-based biofuels or whole trees, even the climate.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday December 02 2016, @10:47PM
Someone hijacked your account Khallow! Sorry, but I'm just shocked at this even keeled approach you're suddenly taking ;)
Couldn't agree more, but more regulatory oversight means funding lots of new employees which is rarely a popular stance. That is probably why most things fail "we need this!" followed immediately by "we're not paying them to do that!"
I have a great plan! Transfer all DEA agents to regulatory oversight! Since we can replace their fancy toys with clipboards we can then allocate their "toy funds" into treatment programs for addicts. Problems at least partway solved.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 02 2016, @11:09PM
shocked at this even keeled approach
Don't worry. I'll lull some fat ship into range of my cannon and hoist the Jolly Roger! The internet will once again fear my rants! No port is safe!
I respond in kind. If someone is polite, I tend to be. If someone comes in yowling "you're a stupid, evil doodiehead", then I tend to turn up the heat a lot. And sometimes I'm just cranky.