Z Energy boss Mike Bennett has stopped eating meat to cut his personal climate impact. Farmers by changing fuel provider can send a clear message to Z Energy that its boss is hitting on an industry that has been unfairly villainized for livestock emissions which do not harm the environment in the way Z Energy products do.
Cutting meat consumption will have no impact on peak global temperatures and will do nothing to stop global warming, in fact it will most likely increase it because it creates a fool’s paradise for people who don’t understand the carbon cycle.
Z Energy has also put its biofuel plant in to hibernation because it can not compete with other buyers for the fatty animal tallow it was using to make biofuel.
This is just the latest of many failures in the biofuel industry. First they created biofuel from corn only to discover that it was causing mass starvation and human misery with a UN committee calling it the greatest crime against humanity ever. Air New Zealand thought it had the answer by flying its planes on biofuel source from Jatropha which is a plant that grows well in arid conditions so would not compete with food crops and cause the same starvation other biofuel did, but then they discovered that if something grows well in arid condition, it grows exceptionally well in fertile conditions so starvation would still be the consequence. Algae sourced biofuel was seen as a viable option that would not kill as many people as other biofuels but they soon discovered algae was not energy dense enough.
Common to all these failures is the inability of these biofuel industries to think critically. The Z Energy’s biofuel from tallow venture is not much different. On the face of it using a byproduct like tallow is a good idea but people have to eat meat in order for it to be produced, so the Z Energy boss’s problem is that if he thinks eating meat is harmful to the planet then he must also think making biofuel from a meat byproduct is too.
The lifecycle carbon emissions of tallow sourced biofuel must also include the fake carbon emissions attributed to methane production from livestock that led the Z Energy boss to the false conclusion he could save the world by eating no meat. These emissions can either be apportioned on a kg of product basis or a value basis but they can not be ignored. The fake carbon emissions sourced from methane are such that whichever way you attribute them the carbon footprint of tallow sourced biofuel is higher than that of diesel.
Of course in the real environment tallow sourced biofuel is better than diesel but you can only conclude that if you recognize the carbon cycle is overlooked in calculating livestock’s impact on global warming. If you did that you would not stop eating meat like the Z Energy boss has.
The Z Energy boss needs to give this matter a bit more thought and farmers by switching to other fuel providers will help him realise that.