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Myths: Believed and Belied
HTLaurel
01/16/2008
The biofuels hype is now being busted, the latest assault coming from no less than Nobel Prize laureate for chemistry Dr. Hartmut Michel who, in a forum at the PICC, said investing in biofuel development was “counterproductive.”
“When you calculate how much of the sun’s energy is stored in the plants, it’s below one percent... When you convert into biofuel, you add fertilizer and then harvest the plants. There’s not real energy gained in biofuel...” For years, we have criticized the biofuels hype as a hoax of environmentalists devouring funds generated due to the energy scare.
Since the 1980s, this columnist stood steadfast against the scare campaign against nuclear power and the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). Up until 1991, nearing the final closure of the BNPP, we helped the late volcanologist and national scientist Raymundo Punongbayan dispel the anti-nuclear environmentalists’ scares that the nuclear plant is on a fault line or earthquake zone (Taiwan is on the ring of fire, but it has five nuclear power plants). The anti-nuke energy activists won the day because they had the international media and NGOs support in this colonial mentality-inflicted country, but today even anti-nuclear Greenpeace co-founder Peter Moore is head of a pro-nuclear coalition.
In 2000, I started cutting off my ties with the Edsa I crowd when it was clear it had started a bandwagon with the foreign and local oligarchs to depose a legitimately elected president and his resistance to sovereign guarantees for Big Business government contracts and exorbitant rate hikes in public utilities. We lambasted “civil society” and its puppy Gloria Arroyo; belittled her “economics” degree as well as those of the “UP economists” whose “free trade” formula we said would spell disaster for the national economy. We fought privatization and deregulation, especially the Epira. It was enacted and look where we are now — the economic backwater of Asia with the highest power cost.
They launched Edsa II as the final move to overthrow an elected president, and retired Gen. Rene de Villa delivered the ultimatum to Estrada. De Villa is “teka teka,” but the real force behind Edsa II were the rogue generals of FVR: Ebdane, Mendoza, Berroya, Angelo Reyes, Calimlim et al. They have turned this country into their milking cow today, taking over key lucrative branches of government. Dinky Soliman and “civil society” et al. worked with Gloria and all these rogues, and sanctimoniously preached “honesty” all the time working with the most dishonest government in the Philippines ever (over 65 percent of Filipinos believing it lies to them or won’t say they believe it either).
Remember the Clean Air Act and how the environmentalist and civil society combined (including Honasan) and on how bad the use of municipal garbage incinerators is? We said that was illogical to claim as some of the cleanest societies have them in abundance, like Japan which has over 2,000 of them. Now, a group of Filipino local officials is calling for a multibillion program to install garbage incinerators all over this country, seeing no solution to the garbage crisis aggravated recently by the controversy and corruption in garbage dump operations. We built a successful urban garbage incinerator with former Quezon City Mayor Jun Simon in 1990, it ran for a year with great success among the Teachers’ Village residents.
On foreign issues: upon Bush’s inauguration we said would launch global perpetual war, it was an obvious conclusion based on a wide range of information coming from a study of conscientious international sources. In 2003, we wrote in our Tribune column that America would be mired in a new Vietnam, but Bush and oligarchs would love that as it can be the excuse to expand war (which they are trying to do on Iran now). War is for profiteering and when we end war profiteering (which kills only young men from the poor) we would end all wars. We echo with conviction from the global peace movement. Gloria and conservative institutions such as the Catholic schools still support the “terror war.”
We blasted myths of public personalities with Gloria and the establishment, such as Gloria supporters Christian and Solita Monsod, Christian for skewing Comelec rules for local oligarchs’ political control of elections in cahoots with Namfrel’s Joe Concepcion. Solita recently wrote a column extolling the mythical “hunger decline” in an SWS survey which was really imported rice dole-outs from India, Thailand and elsewhere which impoverishes and disemploys our farmers. They touted Joey de Venecia III a “hero” for exposing ZTE, I said that’s just for the squabble over spoils — when a threat was made and a deal was sealed he shut up.
“There is no more destructive force in human affairs — not greed, not hatred — than the desire to have been right. Non-attachment to possessions is trivial when compared with non-attachment to opinions” — Mark Kleiman.
But attachment to being wrong is worse, which I still see among dwindling Edsa II adherents, anti-nuke fanatics, anti-incinerator advocates, anti-Estrada mad dogs, columnists of the Alex Magno ilk (who predicted Mahathir’s fall due to his currency and capital controls —wrong) and many others. Being vindicated is humbling. Beyond who is right and who is wrong is a call for all Filipinos to study harder to pierce the myths — there lies our return to national liberation.
(Tune in Monday to Friday 8:30, a.m. to 9 a.m., to 1098AM)
01/16/2008
The biofuels hype is now being busted, the latest assault coming from no less than Nobel Prize laureate for chemistry Dr. Hartmut Michel who, in a forum at the PICC, said investing in biofuel development was “counterproductive.”
“When you calculate how much of the sun’s energy is stored in the plants, it’s below one percent... When you convert into biofuel, you add fertilizer and then harvest the plants. There’s not real energy gained in biofuel...” For years, we have criticized the biofuels hype as a hoax of environmentalists devouring funds generated due to the energy scare.
Since the 1980s, this columnist stood steadfast against the scare campaign against nuclear power and the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). Up until 1991, nearing the final closure of the BNPP, we helped the late volcanologist and national scientist Raymundo Punongbayan dispel the anti-nuclear environmentalists’ scares that the nuclear plant is on a fault line or earthquake zone (Taiwan is on the ring of fire, but it has five nuclear power plants). The anti-nuke energy activists won the day because they had the international media and NGOs support in this colonial mentality-inflicted country, but today even anti-nuclear Greenpeace co-founder Peter Moore is head of a pro-nuclear coalition.
In 2000, I started cutting off my ties with the Edsa I crowd when it was clear it had started a bandwagon with the foreign and local oligarchs to depose a legitimately elected president and his resistance to sovereign guarantees for Big Business government contracts and exorbitant rate hikes in public utilities. We lambasted “civil society” and its puppy Gloria Arroyo; belittled her “economics” degree as well as those of the “UP economists” whose “free trade” formula we said would spell disaster for the national economy. We fought privatization and deregulation, especially the Epira. It was enacted and look where we are now — the economic backwater of Asia with the highest power cost.
They launched Edsa II as the final move to overthrow an elected president, and retired Gen. Rene de Villa delivered the ultimatum to Estrada. De Villa is “teka teka,” but the real force behind Edsa II were the rogue generals of FVR: Ebdane, Mendoza, Berroya, Angelo Reyes, Calimlim et al. They have turned this country into their milking cow today, taking over key lucrative branches of government. Dinky Soliman and “civil society” et al. worked with Gloria and all these rogues, and sanctimoniously preached “honesty” all the time working with the most dishonest government in the Philippines ever (over 65 percent of Filipinos believing it lies to them or won’t say they believe it either).
Remember the Clean Air Act and how the environmentalist and civil society combined (including Honasan) and on how bad the use of municipal garbage incinerators is? We said that was illogical to claim as some of the cleanest societies have them in abundance, like Japan which has over 2,000 of them. Now, a group of Filipino local officials is calling for a multibillion program to install garbage incinerators all over this country, seeing no solution to the garbage crisis aggravated recently by the controversy and corruption in garbage dump operations. We built a successful urban garbage incinerator with former Quezon City Mayor Jun Simon in 1990, it ran for a year with great success among the Teachers’ Village residents.
On foreign issues: upon Bush’s inauguration we said would launch global perpetual war, it was an obvious conclusion based on a wide range of information coming from a study of conscientious international sources. In 2003, we wrote in our Tribune column that America would be mired in a new Vietnam, but Bush and oligarchs would love that as it can be the excuse to expand war (which they are trying to do on Iran now). War is for profiteering and when we end war profiteering (which kills only young men from the poor) we would end all wars. We echo with conviction from the global peace movement. Gloria and conservative institutions such as the Catholic schools still support the “terror war.”
We blasted myths of public personalities with Gloria and the establishment, such as Gloria supporters Christian and Solita Monsod, Christian for skewing Comelec rules for local oligarchs’ political control of elections in cahoots with Namfrel’s Joe Concepcion. Solita recently wrote a column extolling the mythical “hunger decline” in an SWS survey which was really imported rice dole-outs from India, Thailand and elsewhere which impoverishes and disemploys our farmers. They touted Joey de Venecia III a “hero” for exposing ZTE, I said that’s just for the squabble over spoils — when a threat was made and a deal was sealed he shut up.
“There is no more destructive force in human affairs — not greed, not hatred — than the desire to have been right. Non-attachment to possessions is trivial when compared with non-attachment to opinions” — Mark Kleiman.
But attachment to being wrong is worse, which I still see among dwindling Edsa II adherents, anti-nuke fanatics, anti-incinerator advocates, anti-Estrada mad dogs, columnists of the Alex Magno ilk (who predicted Mahathir’s fall due to his currency and capital controls —wrong) and many others. Being vindicated is humbling. Beyond who is right and who is wrong is a call for all Filipinos to study harder to pierce the myths — there lies our return to national liberation.
(Tune in Monday to Friday 8:30, a.m. to 9 a.m., to 1098AM)
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