Palm and Palm Kernel Oil are most widely used problems!
These oils are found in more than 50% of products on grocery store shelves. They are foods and cleaning products. You name it!
That impact is far larger than most people realize. A six-fold increase in global demand for palm oil in recent years has led to deforestation on a massive scale in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia. “One fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions stem from deforestation, the major drivers is palm oil.
The United Nations Environment Programme reports that palm oil plantations are one of the leading causes of rainforest and peatlands loss in Indonesia and Malaysia. This devastation is an important contributor to the global climate crisis:. Palm oil production is also imperilling indigenous peoples and endangered species like the Sumatran rhinoceros, Asian elephant, tiger, and orangutan.
Technorati Tags: deforestation. Endangered species, greenhouse gas emissions, palm oil, palm kernel oil
Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress! If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.
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April 1st, 2009 at 2:27 am
“Hi Jean. I read your blog for the first time today and was taken aback to later discover that you’re a scientist. I don’t mean this as derisive comment or an ad hominem attack against you – I’m sure you’re great at what you do (the fact that you’re also a businesswoman and grandmother leaves me in awe). I simply found your post on palm oil to be indistinguishable from the poorly-supported, scare-mongering screeds routinely spewed out by ill-informed anti-palm oil bloggers that often send me screaming from the room.
I know I sound like a disagreeable loon, but this is where I’m coming from: while I do not in any way belong to the Big Bad palm oil industry, I am a citizen of a small country which happens to be one of the world’s biggest palm oil producers. I point this out not out of naked nationalistic pride (or to play the Third World-er card as a way of guilt-tripping a prosperous, white Western liberal like you), but because I’ve seen first-hand how much this industry – which revolves around a national resource – has helped lift my country’s economy and it’s people’s fortunes, and created a sense of self-sufficiency that we didn’t really have before. Secondly, based also on what I’ve seen first-hand, the palm oil industry CAN and DOES carry out sustainable palm oil practices, and its a policy which can be improved upon and made universal ONLY with the support of the West – not by attempts by some of its members to sabotage the industry through blanket boycotts, smear campaigns, etc.
For more on this, I would ask you to visit http://www.palmoilconsumer.com and http://www.palmoiltruthfoundation.com – two sites I discovered only recently, but which I’ve found to be ably defending the palm oil industry by submitting the hysterical claims and allegations of its detractors to scientific scrutiny.
Anyway, that’s enough out of me. Thanks for letting me yap, Jean. And, in spite of my tiresome comments, please – Keep Posting!”
Andi4.