GREAT CONSPIRACY

The Globe and Mail today (Dec 1) ran a double page spread on renewable energy: gasoline additives and biofuels to replace diesel. There was something missing. It is missing because there may be a conspiracy to keep it missing.

Conspiracy theorists abound. There are still people who believe there has never been a moon landing and that everything was filmed on earth at someplace like the wasted moon-like fields near Coniston, Ontario. And of course there are those who ardently propound the theory that President Obama was not born in America.

Closer to reality are the conspiracy theorists who suggest that the auto and tire makers were behind the dismantling of southern California’s rail and transit systems in the 40s leading to the building of freeways and the birth of the car-based shopping mall. At the fringe of this one are all those stories of people who developed carburetors that would give an ordinary car 100 m.p.g. but they were bought out and shelves by the big car makers. There was even supposed to have been a guy who developed a car that would run on water!

Not all are nitwits. My old friend, the late and very lamented Richard Thomas proved that he could run his car on alcohol distilled from a plant that grew on third class farmland.

Which brings me to the “missing” element in the Globe’s big spread on alternative energy: jatropha seed. I first came across it reading how in Mali, which is plagued with millions of hectares of arid land that is practically un-farmable. Except that they are able to grow jatropha. Jatropha will (according to Wickipedia) yield four times a much oil per hectare as soybeans. One acre will yield 1,892 litres of biofuel.

There are already serious barriers to the development of new biofuels. We all know that America levies a punitive tax on ethanol from Brazil, in order to protect corn growers in the U.S. We know that ethanol production from sugar, which Brazil has plenty of, is eight times more efficient than production from corn.

In our case, the Globe article made a case for the use of Canola. But canola oil uses prime farmland. According to supporters of the Ghea theory, we will cause starvation by using arable land for industrial products when it should be used to feed people.

Which brings me back to jatropa. If it can be grown easily in semi-desert, where it can also benefit poverty-stricken, famine-prone countries like Mali, why does it seem to be kept secret? Are we seeing yet another conspiracy by interests whose profits are vested in present commercial farming assets? Are we to be denied a solution to protect someone’s investment in second rate technology? Who is behind all this? Are governments complicit – as they are in America with their huge import tax on Brazilian sugar-based ethanol?

I am not a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, but I believe that business will serve its self-interest before they service the interests of the general public.

Can you imagine what could be done with millions of semi-arid hectares in the Australian Outback? Boggles the mind.