{"id":10383,"date":"2007-01-31T15:08:23","date_gmt":"2007-01-31T22:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2007\/01\/31\/the-law-of-unintended-consequences-strikes-again.html"},"modified":"2007-01-31T15:08:23","modified_gmt":"2007-01-31T22:08:23","slug":"the_law_of_unintended_con","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/31\/the_law_of_unintended_con.html","title":{"rendered":"The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\/k\/a, “Be Careful What You Incent For.” Today’s cautionary tale comes from the Netherlands, which a few years back went into a big kick for biofuels as a means of producing sustainable, clean energy, in particular the use of palm oil from Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

Fast forward, and things aren’t quite going as expected<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

But last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare. <\/p>\n

Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there. <\/p>\n

Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. <\/p>\n

Considering these emissions, Indonesia had quickly become the world\u2019s third-leading producer of carbon emissions that scientists believe are responsible for global warming<\/a>, ranked after the United States and China, according to a study released in December by researchers from Wetlands International and Delft Hydraulics, both in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Just as it’s argued that use of corn oil for biofuels in the US is neither a net savings of energy nor a more ecologically sound way of producing energy, biofuels in general are now being more carefully scrutinized not just for its value in lab settings but for the economic systems that build up around them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\/k\/a, “Be Careful What You Incent For.” Today’s cautionary tale comes from the Netherlands, which a few years back went into a big kick for biofuels as a means of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4081,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/02\/20\/howdy.html","url_meta":{"origin":10383,"position":0},"title":"Howdy!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 20-Feb-03 6:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"We're back! The vacation was a good one, all things considered. The trip home was less than charming, but only on the annoyance-meter. More to follow on that, as well...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1513,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/12\/18\/and_the_kitchen.html","url_meta":{"origin":10383,"position":1},"title":"And the Kitchen Sync","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 18-Dec-01 5:07pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, I have a Palm. And a Motorola V.60t cell phone. What I really want is to be able to beam my phone numbers from my Palm to my Motorola,...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":171,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/06\/04\/merry_palm.html","url_meta":{"origin":10383,"position":2},"title":"Merry Palm","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Jun-03 8:45am","format":false,"excerpt":"Palm has bought HandSpring. It's a sad sign of the implosion of the PDA market. I never much cared for HandSpring's boxy designs, but as the first Palm clone, I...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2648,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/05\/23\/not_so_merry_pa.html","url_meta":{"origin":10383,"position":3},"title":"Not-so-merry Palms","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 23-May-02 8:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"1. Margie has lost her Palm m100. 2. After numerous drops and spills over its year-plus lifetime, my Palm Vx has developed a small blotch smack-dab in the middle of...","rel":"","context":"In "Personal"","block_context":{"text":"Personal","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10753,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/06\/contact.html","url_meta":{"origin":10383,"position":4},"title":"Contact!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 6-Jul-07 8:28am","format":false,"excerpt":"Getting ready for my shift from the PalmOS-based Treo to the Blackberry, due to arrive (I hope) Monday.\u00a0 I'm going to miss the Palm platform; for all its flaws and...","rel":"","context":"In "My Computer"","block_context":{"text":"My Computer","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/my-computer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":692,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/08\/29\/palm_or_rim.html","url_meta":{"origin":10383,"position":5},"title":"Palm or Rim?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 29-Aug-01 8:04pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Hmmmm. That sounds vaguely ... disturbing. What I mean is, I've been using a Palm Vx for the last year or so. And, much to my surprise, it's become a...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}