Last Friday an advisory panel to the European Environment Agency issued an extraordinary scientific opinion: The European Union should suspend its goal of having 10 percent of transportation fuel made from biofuel by 2020.
The European Union&39;s biofuel targets were increased and extended from 5.75 percent by 2010 to 10 percent by 2020 just last year. Still, Europe&39;s well-meaning rush to biofuels, the scientists concluded, had produced a slew of harmful ripple effects - from deforestation in Southeast Asia to higher prices for grains.
In a recommendation released last weekend, the 20-member panel, made up of some of Europe&39;s most distinguished climate scientists, called the 10 percent target "overambitious" and an "experiment" whose "unintended effects are difficult to predict and difficult to control."
"The idea was that we felt we needed to slow down, to analyze the issue carefully and then come back at the problem," Laszlo Somlyody, the panel&39;s chairman and a professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, said in a telephone interview.
He said that part of the problem was that when it set the targets, the European Union was trying desperately to solve the problem of rising transportation emissions "in isolation," without adequately studying the effects of other sectors like land use and food supply.
"The starting point was correct: I&39;m happy that the European Union took the lead in cutting greenhouse gasses and we need to control traffic emissions," Somlyody said. "But the basic problem is it thought of transport alone, without considering all these other effects. And we don&39;t understand those very well yet." The panel&39;s advice is not binding and it is not clear whether the European Commission will follow the recommendation.
It has become increasingly clear that the global pursuit of biofuels - encouraged by a rash of targets and subsides in both Europe and the United States - has not produced the desired effect.
Investigations have shown, for example, rain forests and peat swamp are being cleared to make way for biofuel plantations, a process that produces more emissions than the biofuels can save. Equally concerning, land needed to produce food forpeople to eat is planted with more profitable biofuel crops, and water is diverted from the drinking supply.
In Europe and the United States, food prices for items like pizza and bread have increased significantly as grain stores shrink and wheat prices rise.
The price of wheat and rice are double those of a year ago, and corn is a third higher, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said this week.
"Food price inflation hits the poor hardest, as the share of food in their total expenditures is much higher than that of wealthier populations," said Henri Josserand of the Food and Agriculture Organization
For example, the European Environment Agency advisory panel suggests that the best use of plant biomass is not for transport fuel but to heat homes and generate electricity.
To be useful for vehicles, plant matter must be distilled to a fuel and often transported long distances. To heat a home, it can often be used raw or with minimal processing, and moved just a short distance away.
相关问题推荐
-
Although field studies have linked inbreeding to declines among song sparrow populations, some researchers argue that, in nature, inbreeding proves ___ as a factor when compared with crushing blows from weather changes.
A.hazardous
B.momentous
C.trivial
D.significant
E.precarious
F.inconsequential -
The author implies that all of the following statements about duplicate artifacts are true EXCEPT__
A．A market for such artifacts already exists.
B．Such artifacts seldom have scientific value.
C．There is likely to be a continuing supply of such artifacts.
D．Museums are well supplied with examples of such artifacts.
E．Such artifacts frequently exceed in quality those already catalogued in museum collections. -
中国人民选择和平发展道路，是基于中国的传统文化、惨痛的历史和现实的巨大成就所作出的明智选择。中国是一个有5000年历史的文明古国，有着与外来文化取长补短、兼容并蓄的传统。我们的祖先历来强调“以和为贵”。历史上，中国在对外交往中始终强调亲仁善邻、和而不同。2000多年前，中国与周边国家有使节往来、商品交易、文化交流，汉朝张骞出使西域开辟了陆上“丝绸之路”。1000多年前，中国对外交往海陆并重，盛况空前，茶叶、丝绸、瓷器等商品远销亚欧诸多国家；600多年前，中国明代航海家郑和率领舰队“七下西洋”，足迹遍及亚非30多个国家和地区，带去的是先进的农耕和手工艺技术，还有精美的产品和真诚的友谊。这样的文化传统决定了今天的中国必然选择和平发展延续历史，并融入当今世界和平与发展的潮流。
从19世纪80年代之后的鸦片战争、甲午战争，到庚子之乱乃至20世纪30年代的日本侵华战争，中国惨遭东西方列强的屠戮和极其野蛮的经济掠夺；再加上封建腐败和连年内乱，中国主权沦丧、生灵涂炭、国力衰弱、民不聊生。深重的灾难、惨痛的事实使中华民族深知和平之珍贵、发展之重要。这样的历史实践形成了中国人民渴望和平、企求安定的心理，坚定了中国人民走和平发展道路的信念。
1949年新中国成立后，我们在发展道路上艰辛探索，既经历过成功的喜悦，也经受过失败的挫折。从1978年开始，中国开启了新的征程，从计划转向市场，从封闭转向开放，从自成一体转向融入经济全球化，走独立自主地建设中国特色社会主义的道路，取得了举世瞩目的辉煌成就。实践充分证明，坚持走和平发展的道路是正确的，既符合中国国情，又顺应时代潮流。中国将沿着这条和平发展的道路，坚定不移地走下去。 -
The theory mentioned in line 1 relates to the conceptual models discussed in the passage in which of the following ways？
A．It may furnish a valid account of ore-forming processes, and, hence, can support conceptual models that have great practical significance.
B．It suggests that certain geological formations, long believed to be mineralized, are in fact mineralized, thus confirming current conceptual models.
C．It suggests that there may not be enough similarity across Archean-age gold-quartz vein systems to warrant the formulation of conceptual models.
D．It corrects existing theories about the chemical halos of gold deposits, and thus provides a basis for correcting current conceptual models.
E．It suggests that simple prospecting methods still have a higher success rate in the discovery of gold deposits than do more modern methods. -
LONGYEARBYEN, Norway — With plant species disappearing at an alarming rate, scientists and governments are creating a global network of plant banks to store seeds and sprouts, precious genetic resources that may be needed for man to adapt the world？ s food supply to climate change.
This week, the flagship of that effort, the Global Seed Vault near here, received its first seeds, millions of them. Bored into the middle of a frozen Arctic mountain topped with snow, the vault？ s goal is to store and protect samples of every type of seed from every seed collection in the world.
As of Thursday, thousands of neatly stacked and labeled gray boxes of seeds — peas from Nigeria, corn from Mexico — reside in this glazed cavelike structure, forming a sort of backup hard drive, in case natural disasters or human errors erase the seeds from the outside world.
Descending almost 500 feet under the permafrost, the entrance tunnel to the seed vault is designed to withstand bomb blasts and earthquakes. An automated digital monitoring system controls temperature and provides security akin to a missile silo or Fort Knox. No one person has all the codes for entrance.
The Global Vault is part of a broader effort to gather and systematize information about plants and their genes, which climate change experts say may indeed prove more valuable than gold. In Leuven, Belgium, scientists are scouring the world for banana samples and preserving their shoots in liquid nitrogen before they become extinct. A similar effort is under way in France on coffee plants. A number of plants, most from the tropics, do not produce seeds that can be stored.
For years, a hodgepodge network of seed banks has been amassing seed and shoot collections in a haphazard manner. Labs in Mexico banked corn species. Those in Nigeria banked cassava. Now these scattershot efforts are being urgently consolidated and systematized, in part because of better technology to preserve plant genes and in part because of the rising alarm about climate change and its impact on world food production.
“We started thinking about this post-9/11 and on the heels of Hurricane Katrina,” said Cary Fowler, president of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a nonprofit group that runs the vault. “Everyone was saying, why didn？ t anyone prepare for a hurricane before？ We knew it was going to happen.“Well, we are losing biodiversity every day — it？ s a kind of drip, drip, drip. It？ s also inevitable. We need to do something about it.”
This week the urgency of the problem was underscored as wheat prices rose to record highs and wheat stores dropped to the lowest level in 35 years. A series of droughts and new diseases cut wheat production in many parts of the world. “The erosion of plants？ genetic resources is really going fast,” said Dr. Rony Swennen, head of the division of crop biotechnology at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, who has preserved half of the world？ s 1,200 banana types. “We？ re at a critical moment and if we don？ t act fast, we？ re going to lose a lot of plants that we may need.”
The United Nations International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, ratified in 2004, created a formal global network for banking and sharing seeds, as well as for studying their genetic traits. Last year, its database received thousands of new seeds.
A system of plant banks could be crucial in responding to climate crises since it could identify genetic material and plant strains better able to cope with a changed environment.
Here at the Global Vault, hundreds of gray boxes containing seeds from places ranging from Syria to Mexico were moved this week into a freezing vault to be placed in suspended animation. They harbor a vast range of qualities, like the ability to withstand drier, warmer climate.