Branson Pickle?

[Muddypause]

Richard Branson is to invest a stack of money into developing alternative fuels to help combat global warming. Ultimately, according the the article in The Independent, he wants to see if he can run his trains and aircraft on it.

Now look, if we were to run all the cars in the UK on biofuels, it would take something like 5 times the available land mass to grow the crops. Now we've go to run trains and aircraft as well? And don't forget all those people who want to plant trees as a carbon off-set.

Where are we going to find room for all those bleeding windfarms?

[Andy Hamilton]

I think that media freindly quick fixes work pretty well. I mean if the seas rise we will just do what Holland does and get a big dyke, if the ozone totally goes then we will all wear hats, water runs out drink less, no room for crops colonise the moon.

[bwaymark]

If you look at the amount of available farm land in this country that isn't used, then consider all the cash crops that could be replaced with bio-fuel (imagine how much biofuel could be produced on all the land currently growing coffee, tea and tobacco, then image if we converted golf courses, roads, commerical flower gardens, cut down on meat consuption and freed up grazing land). Not to mention we could also cut the amount of the journies, and the amount of one-person-in-car journies, we made drastically.

The nice about the decidance of our current society is that we live in is that there is plenty of areas that we can cut back in!

So whose with me on a boycot of coffee, tea and tabacco :-)

[Stonehead]

So whose with me on a boycot of coffee, tea and tabacco :-)

Converting golf courses to bio-fuel growing areas wins my vote. And no, it's not that I have a thing about golfers - have you seen how much pesticide, fungicide, insecticide, herbicide, synthetic fertiliser and other rubbish is poured onto golf courses?

The OH's parents live in a house backing onto a golf course, and it's always being sprayed with one thing or another. Ugh!

[bwaymark]

Not from where I live, in Northam Burrows, there is a golf course that also doubles as public grazing for horse and sheep.... fantastic! Thats the way they are all should be I reckon. Incidently, it is also one of (if not the) oldest courses in the country....

[Ranter]

I have a problem with golf courses too, especially in countries where water is short & many people don't have access to clean water - but those golf courses stay nice & green

I've just deleted a rant about most cash crops, but that's not really the issue. Suffice to say, most would be better replaced with food for domestic populations. That'd cut down on transport costs & help poorer countries improve the diets of their people.

[Chickpea]

Yep and of course if we grew food close to where it is eaten instead of flying/shipping/driving it all over the world then that would mean we'd need less of the biofuel anyway. I took some surplus runner beans and courgettes to the local farm shop today. They had travelled a food mile (could have done it by foot or bike ideally but it was all combined with the school run so I was in the car).

[Martin]

ho hum, that'll be laying waste to the rest of the amazon basin, and the growing of GM frankenfuel then!
Lots of green brownie points (and probably tax breaks) for the leering Branson, while he carries on despoiling our planet with his blasted aircraft!