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posted by Fnord666 on Friday December 02 2016, @07:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-think-you're-doing-it-wrong dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday December 02 2016, @10:49PM

    by Zz9zZ (1348) on Friday December 02 2016, @10:49PM (#436290)

    Lots of people, just not the right ones. Also, the public is very scared of a terrorist taking over the facility and escaping in a helicopter to blow up DC. Nevermind that the FAA would track them and military fighters would be on them in seconds... Yay propaganda making people terrified of the word radiation. I've had to clear up EM radiation / nuclear radiation more times than I care to count.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 03 2016, @01:37AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday December 03 2016, @01:37AM (#436357)

    I'm with you right up to the "fighters would be on them in seconds..." Our fighter bases are actually spread fairly thin, sometimes they would have to respond over 300 miles or more, which they can do in about 20 minutes, but only after they get airborne which can take another 5 to 10 sometimes. Even in Washington D.C., the fighters weren't able to respond in time to stop the Pentagon bound plane...

    The real difference in radiation is ionizing vs non-ionizing. Linear accelerators generate ionizing radiation without the use of radioactive materials. I'm not convinced that non-ionizing radiation is as harmless as everyone treats it, but I am definitely convinced that ionizing radiation can be harmful and is not as predictable as the "experts" seem to think it is - I have personally bumped into far too many people who died, of cancer, well before their time after working in a job that had them dealing "safely" with sources of ionizing radiation.

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    • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday December 03 2016, @04:21AM

      by Zz9zZ (1348) on Saturday December 03 2016, @04:21AM (#436388)

      I was assuming that there would at least be security alerts when the thieves went in. But you're right, likely they might be able to escape if they planned it perfectly, though I presume security would be designed to give some delay. They always use tight security right? lawl

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