Why EU ban Malaysian Palm Oil?
According to Transport & Environment, palm oil production - much of it for biofuels - is one of the key drivers of environmental destruction in Southeast Asia and increasingly in South America.
It has been responsible for rainforests destruction, swamp and peatland drainage - soy being the other oil crop directly associated with deforestation. More than half of all the palm oil imported into Europe ends up in the fuel tanks of cars and trucks.
Palm oil and global warming
Almost all oil palm grows in ares that were once tropical forests, some of them quite recently (see map below). This environmental destruction threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn drives global warming.
Deforestation means burning and chopping down trees that are the habitats of endangered species such as orangutans and elephants.
The real palm oil problem: it's not just in your food, it's in YOUR CAR too
Despite all the efforts by food and cosmetics consumer brands not to use unsustainable palm oil, drivers in Europe are forced to fill up their diesel cars with pal oil biodiesel (most of the time without their knowledge).
Drivers are the top consumers of palm oil in Europe and drivers don't know they are burning palm in their cars.
In fact, more than half of all imported palm oil is used to make biodiesel for European cars and trucks.
Since 2009 virtually all of the growth in biodiesel has come from imported palm oil.
Palm oil biodiesel is the worst of all biofuels. It releases three times the greenhouse gases emissions of fossil diesel.
If the wold were to follow Europe's current thirst for palm oil biodiesel, 4,300,000 hectares of land in the tropics would be needed to quench it. That area is equal to the remaining rainforests and peatlands of Borneo, Sumatra and peninsular Malaysia.
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