Roger Peet

I wanted to make an image about biofuels because they are a particularly insidious part of the false future we’re being sold on a daily basis. Fuels generated from Cane or Corn, from Oil Palm or Jatropha plantations are held up as environmentally sound alternatives to fossil fuels. They’re not. Their production requires massive inputs of fossil fuels to get going, and the sites used for cultivation are frequently areas previously covered by tropical forest. Southeast Asia has lost millions of hectares of primary rainforest, with millions more planned. The biofuels industry has cut a bloody swathe through the ecosystems of Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Tropical America, and shows no sign of letting up. Biofuels production consumes enormous amounts of water and diminishes biodiversity in a catastrophic cascade. Sustainable energy is a myth. The only thing that might be sustainable is diminished consumption and a smaller human population.