Hello Hakan >Keith, > >You are right, they are all a part of the snake in the Paradise, not that I >belive in this evolution story, but as a prejudice in the old law (bible) >of human behavior the story is quite good.
Snakes have had a bad press (fine critters, snakes), but it's apt - "snakes in the grass", good description of these Astroturf groups. >It has to be countered, but how >to make it efficient? > >Internet might give us the chance to counter, at least the power of >publicity is more democratic today. I have in many senses admired the >actions of Greenpeace, even if I in many cases do not agree with the >simplicity and polarization they stand for. And they cheat sometimes, but I agree with you. >To counter the messages from the snake is not really the problem, to >distribute the message and get people to read is. For this it needs >cooperation and coherence. Yes, that's exactly the problem. It's interesting that ethanol has been getting a much worse knocking in this disinformation game than biodiesel has, despite the antipathy to biodiesel of the rather powerful diesel-bashing lobby in the US, and I think I can see one reason why that might be so. Walker just posted a link to this story: "Coffee company delivers using 100 percent biodiesel". I've spent hours today going through backed-up news incomings, and saw that story, plus a few others. Good news about biodiesel in the US is rather noticeable these days, much more so than it was a couple of years ago, when such stories were very rare. A lot of them come from people like Mike Pelly, on the front page of the Seattle Times recently, or one in The Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon, featuring three activists at the Oregon Country Fair, or a story in Grist featuring the "Granola Ayatollah of Canola", an activist in Colorado, who's also the subject of a 15-minute movie called "French Fries to Go" that's doing the rounds of the local festivals. Biodieseler Scott Durkee, one of Mike's friends, has just had CNN do a piece on him (not yet released), the Berkeley Ecology Center's Dave Williamson gets stories and comments in several places, and there are plenty more of them. Meanwhile Mike, Scott, Mark and many others do a lot of workshops and promote biodiesel at all the fairs. There's what Dan's doing, creating an online OPED bank for general use. And Internet mailing lists like this one and others are a sort of glue holding the whole thing together. The essential element is I think that it focuses on small-scale efforts, mostly individual people - local efforts. What we're always saying about the need to decentralize energy production. If you compare it with the more corporate publicity generated by the industry, Big Biodiesel, you can see the difference. Have a look at these, World Energy's efforts, the work of their PR agency, fairly typical: http://www.worldenergy.net/industry_news.html http://www.worldenergy.net/WORLD_ENERGY_NEWS.html Not to knock it, everything helps, but it's much more corporate stuff, business page, industry publications. Less personable, not such a good read. No way would they ever dream up a Granola Ayatollah of Canola. And it's less effective, I think. If we turn to ethanol, well, it's a bit of a disappointment. We started this list nearly three years ago to promote small-scale, D-I-Y ethanol and biodiesel, and while ethanol hasn't exactly been a failure, it certainly hasn't taken off at the backyard level like biodiesel has, not even remotely so. And there are some disadvantages to ethanol, you can't just put it in your tank and go, you have to work on the engine. There are people doing it, but they don't make much noise. Ethanol doesn't have its activists. Maybe the moonshine laws have something to do with that too. So we're left with just the corporate stuff generated by the NBB-equivalents of the ethanol industry, like ACE and the RFA, again not to knock them, while ADM is pathetic when it comes to putting out the ethanol message. You just don't see front-page stories in the Seattle Times about some guy who puts sweet potatoes in his tank. And that leaves plenty of room for the David Pimentels and Heritage Foundations of this world. Also, they have a really big advantage - they don't have to be honest. And hence Motie's groans, he's fighting a real uphill battle. So, maybe the best way we can counter this type of disinfo effectively is to go on doing what we're doing - trying to promote small-scale, local, D-I-Y biofuels. But maybe somebody would like to follow in Dan's footsteps and write a general-purpose OPED piece on ethanol that could also be used to debunk this kind of disinfo? The Heritage Foundation piece is a fair example of what you'd have to take an axe to, and the main resources are here: http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html Is ethanol energy-efficient? And here: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_food.html Biofuels - Food or Fuel? I think Alan wrote something for his paper in Florida a couple of weeks ago, I'll ask him for it, might help. Best wishes Keith >Hakan > >At 12:54 PM 10/16/2002 +0900, you wrote: > >Well, the Heritage Foundation, what can you expect? It's part of the > >far-right anti-environmental movement. Associated with the > >Competitive Enterprise Institute, along with Michael Fumento, and the > >Reason Foundation, which receives Big Tobacco funding, and so on. > >Reason magazine's editor is tobacco industry apologist Jacob Sullum. > >Associated with Steven Milloy, Alex Avery and so on. All the usual > >suspects. <snip" > > >An example of what we're up against. Constantly regurgitated garbage > > >in a seemingly closed-loop system. > > >The closest thing I've seen to an Over-Unity device! > > > > > > > > >http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm158.cfm > > > > > >Ethanol Producers Get a Handout from Consumers > > >by Erin M. Hymel > > >WebMemo #158 ------------------------ Yahoo! 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