Bureaucrats can never fail

WHEN bureaucrats make a cock-up, they don't get fired, they get re-assigned or they invent a bureaucratic solution to the problem. So it seems from the admission by the European Commission ( Daddy of all Bureaucratic systems) that they got it wrong in promoting a whole range of bio fuels in the belief that they would curb dreaded CO2 emissions. It now appears that many of these green fuels do more damage -- or at least as much damage -- as horrible old petroleum products. Not to worry, the EU is now planning to license bio-fuels so that only approved ones with the correct carbon footprint will be permitted to reach the market. Who will oversee the licensing? Why, the EU itself, of course.

Take a lesson from Malaysia

IN Malaysia a jump in palm oil prices has brought the bio-fuel industry there to a halt. Malaysia, a large palm oil producer, licenced 90 companies to set up bio diesel projects with a capacity of nearly 10 million tonnes, or some 200,000 barrels per day. Now it has seven plants running below capacity. Even oil prices at $100 a barrel aren't helping. More than a dozen bio diesel plants have been delayed. Oh, by the way, they are calling for subsidies for bio fuel already. The siren song of every inefficient, unprofitable enterprise since time began.

Nuclear facts, not fiction are needed here

Listen up South Africa. Britain is planning to build a whole raft of new nuclear power plants. France already gets 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear plants ( and even has enough to export to Germany). The so called Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown was nothing of the sort. Nobody died. None of the neighbours developed cancers attributable to the very small leak and despite all the hype about the China Syndrome ( the scare story of the day was that the core of the reactor would burrow through the earth all the way to China) the Three Mile Island plant is still there providing electricity. Yes, Chernobyl was a disaster. Yes, people died. Those who died were the brave firemen and others who capped the reactor with concrete -- not the neighbours, near or far. The area around Chernobyl was evacuated but, hey, guess what? Animals returned and are happily grazing and living without glowing in the dark or producing offspring with three heads. Chernobyl was a Russian-designed and built plant, erected during the Soviet era and its main purpose was to provide fuel for bombs -- with electricity and safety a very secondary consideration. No one would have dared build one like it in the West. So, now you know enough to judge the hysterical noises now coming from Earthlife Africa in an attempt to block Escom's plans to build new nuclear plants in South Africa. There will be more green lies and exaggerations. Keep cool and remember, they are trying to scare you.

If Biofuels could grow like weeds…

This is by SCOTT CANON of the The Kansas City Star: "There was a time when planting Johnson grass in the United States seemed like a good idea. Brought from the Mediterranean in the early 1800s as a forage crop, Johnson grass practically planted itself. Its leaves could stretch 10 feet high. It adapted easily to virtually the entire continent. Which turned out to be precisely the problem. Today it’s a scourge, a fast-growing grass that crowds out native plants and forces farmers to spend billions in a losing anti-weed battle. And it offers a lesson for agricultural scientists looking for the right plant to convert into renewable fuels like ethanol. Preferably, the plant would produce a maximum of bio fuel with a minimum of effort. Ideally, it would flourish without fertilizers, be a perennial that shoots back to life on its own every spring and require little more than that a farmer cut it down and haul it to an ethanol plant. Like Johnson grass...." OR , says Spigot, like Dagga… think about it. It grows like hell in KwaZulu Natal, the former Transkei and Swaziland. No one need be trained to grow it. There already exists a sub-continent-wide distribution system. All we need is a genetically-modified version which contains no cannabinoids and we have a "green" solution to our energy problem, a brand new source of tax revenue and -- at a stroke -- a legitimate new industry employing thousands. Oh, and the fibre can make rope, and virtually indestructible cloth. Now Spigot knows there is some ongoing research into a drug free verion of dagga, but why the hell isn't money being thrown at it?