Palm oil, commodities, and profit
Posted by Michael on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
From The International News (Pakistan):
“Malaysian palm oil futures jumped more than 2 per cent to a new peak for the sixth straight session on Thursday on tight global vegetable oil supplies and crude oil’s record over $101…. Palm oil has climbed nearly 21 per cent this year, driven by increased Chinese and European demand, a flood of funds into commodity markets and Jakarta’s plans to hike export taxes for palm oil.“
What?? How can we allow palm oil to be profitable?
Palm oil is forecast to be the world’s most produced and internationally traded edible oil by 2012. Malaysia and Indonesia account for 83 percent of production and 89 percent of global exports. Oil palm is grown as an industrial plantation crop, often (especially in Indonesia) on newly cleared rainforest or peat-swamp forests rather than on already degraded land or disused agricultural land. Since the 1970s, the area planted with oil palm in Indonesia has grown over 30-fold to almost 12,000 square miles. In Malaysia, the area devoted to oil palm has increased 12-fold to 13,500 square miles.
That’s right, and it’s even really bad for us.
Palm oil is used around the world in such foods as margarine, shortening, baked goods, and candies. Biomedical research indicates that palm oil, which is high in saturated fat and low in polyunsaturated fat, promotes heart disease. Though less harmful than partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, it is far more conducive to heart disease than such heart-protective liquid oils as olive, soy, and canola. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, World Health Organization, and other health authorities have urged reduced consumption of oils like palm oil.
quotes from the Center for Science in the Public Interest
So it kills us, it kills the rain forest, it’s threatening the orangutan…. it’s bad! So why the $%@#$ are we accepting it being profitable? Why are we allowing this to happen?
Tags: commodities, palm oil, rainforest destruction, stupidity
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I heard this great “Fresh AIr” interview with this science writer named Michael Specter. He has a great article in The New Yorker called
“Big Foot”
On “Fresh Air” he talked about how maybe 5 billion dollars a year could keep Indonesians from cutting down their rain forest. That’s a drop in the ding-dang bucket! Here’s that interview.