How did palm oil become such a problem — and what can we do about it? | Ensia.
November 3, 2014 — Last August, from the window of a jet high over Sumatra, I counted nearly a dozen plumes of smoke rising from the vast jungles and plantations below. Some more than a half-mile wide, they looked like pillars holding up the sky. That week the Indonesian Disaster Mitigation Agency detected 143 new wildfires in Riau Province, the area beneath my flight. All of the fires were almost certainly related to deforestation for timber operations and agriculture — predominantly oil palm cultivation.
Palm oil — which appears in a dizzying amount of food and cosmetic products and is a feedstock for biofuel — poses many environmental problems. It’s the largest driver of Indonesian deforestation, which destroys habitat and contributes to climate change. And ponds of wastewater at palm oil refineries release immense amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Solutions to the environmental problems posed by palm production are complicated, partly because palm oil’s ubiquity, but also because alternatives lack many of the benefits of the versatile oil. But they are out there.
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