Game Show Takes Deadly Turn with Knives Thrown at ‘Orangutan’
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Portsmouth, UK – Staff at Lush Cosmetics are used to going the extra mile to help draw attention to ethical issues, from stripping-off to extol the virtues of unpacked “naked” products to suspending themselves from hooks in windows to draw attention to the killing of sharks; but now one of Lush Portsmouth’s staff will literally put their life on the line to draw attention to the environmental and social cost of biofuels.
On Wednesday 19 May, 2010, Store manager Tom Pearson will be dressed in an orangutan costume, strapped to a spinning “Biofuel Wheel of Misfortune”, while a knife thrower hurls foot-long razor sharp knives at him.
This is going to take place at Lush Cosmetics, Unit 1, Cascades Shopping Centre, Portsmouth, PO1 4RL.
The “wheel is misfortune” is a twisted take on the wheel of fortune game show, with each segment of the wheel documenting the problems with biofuel, as follows:
Every store in the UK will be displaying a wheel of misfortune in the window this week, but only Derby and Portsmouth will have the live knife-throwing events.
Customers will be asked to sign a postcard calling on the government to scrap subsidies (called ROCs) for biofuels, and each person that signs a card will get to a spin of the wheel and a chance to win a limited edition “Get your ROCs off” soap.
Lush have campaigned against palm oil for several years, and there are now plans to build power stations in Britain fuelled by palm oil from Indonesia, where rainforests are being chopped down to make way for palm plantations. Demand for palm oil as a biofuel is now one of the main drivers of deforestation in Indonesia and so Lush have been working with Biofuelwatch to find out how we can stop the burgeoning biofuel industry. Biofuels are also responsible for increasing hunger and poverty in many developing countries. Action Aid have documented how jatropha, a poisonous plant with oil-rich seeds, is being grown as a biofuel in India and Africa, taking land that would otherwise be used to feed people.
Lush Campaigns Manager Andrew Butler says, “The world’s tropical forests are already on the brink of collapse through aggressive logging and clearance for food crops. If the EU and UK government continue to subsidise biofuels for transport fuels and electricity generation then we can kiss goodbye to the last remaining forests and all the people and animals who depend of them for survival.”
Lush’s “Biofuel Isn’t The Answer” campaign will run in all 90 of their UK stores from 17th to 23rd May. For more information please visit www.lush.co.uk
Biofuels, for those that may not know, are made from plants, such as palm fruit, jatropha and corn. These plants are processed into oil which is then burned to generate electricity, produce heat, or are used in transport fuel for cars, trucks and busses.
So what’s wrong with biofuels?, you may rightly ask.
At first glance the idea of moving away from non-renewable and polluting fossil fuels to using plants which you can keep growing to meet our energy needs seems like a good idea. Unfortunately our energy needs are so vast that the amount of land needed to grow fuel is causing massive deforestation, taking land away from food production and is displacing people, increasing poverty and hunger in places like Indonesia, India and parts of Africa and South America.
Couldn’t biofuels help people in developing countries by providing industry and income?
The development charity Action Aid has looked at the effect growing crops biofuel is having on people in developing countries in a report called “Meals per gallon”. Here’s what the author of the report, Tim Rice, had to say: “Biofuels are driving a global human tragedy. Local food prices have already risen massively. As biofuel production gains pace, this can only accelerate. Poor people can spend as much as 80 per cent of their income on food. Even small increases in the price of staples such as maize and wheat mean that many more will become increasingly desperate.”
Turning a food crop like corn into a fuel stock means that the price of corn goes up as rich energy companies start buying it up for fuel, taking it out of the reach of poor people who can on longer afford to feed themselves and their families.
What about non-edible crops like jatropha?
Crops like Jatropha are non-edible and some people claim they can be grown on “marginal” land (i.e. land that is not forest and is not suitable for growing food crops). There are two problems with this, first is that so-called marginal land is usually very important to local people, as it is used for collecting fire wood and medicinal plants. Second, jatraopha requires fertile agricultural land in order to be commercially viable, producing enough oil per hectare to make economic sense for the energy companies to use it. Companies growing jatropha as a biofuel are now using land that would otherwise be used by local people to grow food, adding to the burden of hunger and poverty many already face. Again, Action Aid has documented this widely. Here is Elisa Mongue’s story:
Elisa is a smallholder farmer in Mozambique. She used to grow many different crops on her land including maize, millet and pumpkins. Then the family smallholding, their livelihood and primary source of food, was seized by a company to grow industrial biofuels for our cars. The company did not ask her permission to take the land nor have they given her any compensation. Alisa says, "I don’t have a farm, I don’t have a garden…I have given up because we don’t have anything to eat."
Are biofuels currently used in the UK?
Unfortunately biofuel is already in all of the fuel used in UK petrol stations. Currently the mix is around 3% biofuel in our road fuel, but EU targets aim to increase this first to 5% then to 10%.
There are also plans by a number of companies to use biofuel to produce electricity. This is happening because currently the government given the maximum subsidies to biofuels as a “green” and “sustainable means of producing energy. These subsidies are in the form of Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROCs) and biofuel power stations are eligible for the same amount of ROCs as off-shore wind farms!
Who is campaigning against biofuels?
There are lots of groups campaigning against biofuel, from Friends of the Earth to Greenpeace, Action Aid to Oxfam. Lush are working with a small grassroots group called Biofuelwatch on this issue. Biofuelwatch are run by volunteers who are been instrumental in fighting against every biofuel power plant that’s been put forward in Britain. We’ve already given Biofuelwatch a grant through Charity Pot, and we hope this campaign will help to raise their profile and also make more people aware of this important issue.
What are Lush asking people to do?
The most important thing we can do is to stop the government from subsidising biofuel energy production. At the moment biofuels are profitable and therefore viable because they are given millions in subsidies, which ultimately we all pay for through a levy on our electricity bills. We need to get as many people as possible to insist that the government stop subsidising biofuels by signing our postcard to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Biofuels are not sustainable, not even at the greatest stretch of anyone's imagination and it is but yet another way for the internal combustion engine and the oil industry to be kept artificially alive.
I have said it before and will do so again: We must find different ways and electric vehicles must be a start when it comes to the car and van. We also may have to consider once again how we travel and where are stuff is made and how it comes to us.
For more info visit www.biofuelwatch.org.uk
© 2010
Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro) 
