Fuelling the biofuels debate

With the biofuels sector attracting so much talk of silver bullets one might be forgiven for thinking that the Lone Ranger* had ridden back into town. While the Lone Ranger used silver bullets to remind himself how precious life was, and, like his bullets, should not be wasted, the term “silver bullet” more recently has come to mean an all encompassing and straightforward fix for a problem.

In particular it has become a pejorative term used by NGOs and environmental lobbyists to beat green technology developers with. Sadly it reduces what should be a reasonable, and important, conversation about the pros and cons of technology to the yah boo sucks level of playground rhetoric.

Take today’s (1st September) press release form Friends of the Earth; Geoengineering is no silver bullet says the headline. The release continues:

Commenting on a report published today by the Royal Society, looking into the feasibility and potential dangers of tackling climate change with geoengineering, Friends of the Earth’s Head of Climate Change Mike Childs said:

Geoengineering is no silver bullet – it won’t solve climate change. The different options will take time to develop, risks need to be properly researched, and if we use geoengineering at all it must be in addition to making deep cuts in the amount of carbon dioxide we produce in the first place.”

Now as far as I can see the Royal Society’s report on Geoengineering made no claim to be a  silver bullet. It did, however, put forward some interesting technological solutions that could be looked at to mitigate some of problems we are facing. The technology was interesting and innovative and to simply ignore it would be crass. But that is exactly what FoE seems to be suggesting.

The release continued with the rather emotive; “We haven’t got time to play Russian roulette with the future of the planet.” Silver bullets and a bit of fear in the form of Russian roulette and the future of the world are heady stuff as far as headlines in the tabloids are concerned but they add little to the real debate.

However, undeterred and completely shamlessly Mr Childs then whips out his own quick fix solution; “Investing in green industries will slash carbon emissions, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and lead us out of recession towards a clean, stable and prosperous global economy”, said Childs in the release.

Missing the irony completely Childs has just pomised a straightforward and simple fix “Investing in green industries” that will solve all the problems “slash carbon emissions, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and lead us out of recession towards a clean, stable and prosperous global economy” all in one fell swoop. A true silver bullet.

Maybe we now know the identity of that masked man…

*For those of you too young to remember the Lone Ranger was a character in a western series which ran on radio and television from the early 1930s through to the mid 50s. He and his loyal sidekick Tonto fought injustice and wrong in the wild west.

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