The Good News/Bad News of Palm Oil as an Alternate Fuel

We'll outsource to Randy on most of this, but two points of his are worth re-emphasizing here. First, it is great that palm oil is emerging as a possible source of alternate fuel, given the ease and low cost with which it can be produced. Second, such a gain will be useless if Asia continues (and Latin America starts) to just slash and burn existing forests to produce palm oil. To me, this is probably the greatest hazard of the temptation of alternate fuels, and perhaps one of the most unstated errors - destroying current natural environmental conditions to cash in on the alternate fuels craze is as damaging as continuing to rape the earth for fossil fuels. I'm not holding my breath in Asia, but hopefully, should Latin American countries (in this case, Brazil, plus whomever else may jump on board) will look to Asia's mistakes and not repeat them (though I may be futilely holding my breath on that one, too...)