Banning Palm Oil: An Earth Day Proposal for Climate Change

[BillTre]

TL;DR Summary

Since its Earth Day, I am wondering what might be the consequences of simply banning Palm Oil (a major driver of tropical deforestration).

Here is my not particularly well thought out Earth Day Proposal for your collective consideration.

The building of palm oil plantations is often cited as a driver of tropical rainforest deforestration (which is thought to contribute to climate change in a variety of ways (I'm not providing citations for this because I see no point in arguing back and forth about things for which pro and con arguments can easily be googled up)).

Many anti-climate change proposals seem rather complex and require a lot of international cooperation, making them difficult to implement. To me this approach, although it won't fix everything, has the appeall of simplicity (in understanding and can be implementation). It also could be implemented in a country by country manner, not requiring international agreements.
In addition, many large countries are not producers of palm oil, so getting them to ban it might make it more likely. On the other hand large companies in those countries might object.

Palm oil is now used in lots of ways/products, so I guessing a ban would have to be implemented gradually (which would give the producers a period to get used to the changes).

This would seem therefore to be a simpler way to have some positive response to the climate crisis (for a change)!
I am getting tired of talk, talk, talk, lie, lie, lie, without any significant positive results.

Expecting a lot of negative responses, but this is my Earth Day Commenorative Proposal.

 

[chemisttree]

Two countries account for 90% of all palm oil exports - Malaysia and Indonesia. The three largest users are India, China and the EU.

Good luck with your project.

 

[chemisttree]

How about a synthetic version of palm oil derived from already available veg oil?
The fatty acid breakdown of palm oil:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0095412.t001

Some of the active organizations studying or funding studies for palm oil.

Centro de Investigaciones en Palma de Aceite (CENIPALMA), Colombia;
International Consortium Oil Palm Genome Projects (OPGP) and its members:
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), France;
Instituto Vasco de Investigación y Desarrollo Agrario (NEIKER), Spain;
Advanced Agriecological Research Sdn. Bhd (AAR), Malaysia;
PT Astra Agro Lestari Tbk, Indonesia;
PT Inti Indosawit Subur and its affiliates (Asian Agri Group), Indonesia;
PT Bakrie Sumatera Plantations Tbk, Indonesia;
Centro de Investigaciones en Palma de Aceite (CENIPALMA), Colombia;
Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (EMBRAPA), Brazil;
Felda Agricultural Services Sdn Bhd, Malaysia;
Genting Plantations Berhad, Malaysia;
IOI Corporation Berhad, Malaysia;
Indonesian Oil Palm Research Institute (IOPRI), Indonesia;
PT Matahari Kahuripan Indonesia, Indonesia;
PT SMART Tbk, Indonesia;
PT Sampoerna Agro Tbk, Indonesia;
SOCFIN Group, Luxemburg

 

[256bits]

simply banning Palm Oil (a major driver of tropical deforestration).

With what would you replace palm oil?
That question does have implications, as other crops would have to replace and become predominate, with their own particular impact upon the environment.

 

[chemisttree]

Alternative for Palm Oil already here. Costs more. Maybe pay for it with money from the Green Climate Fund?

 

[BillTre]

With what would you replace palm oil?

What did palm oil take the place of when it became popular?

 

[256bits]

What did palm oil take the place of when it became popular?

Good answer.
That I do not know.

But with an increasing population, the demand would have increased of either palm oil, or of the other product(s).
If the other products had not been replaced, and the yield is not as great per land area as I understand, more agricultural land above the present 5% would have to be allocated to oil production crops.

 

[chemisttree]

What did palm oil take the place of when it became popular?

More expensive oils. Palm oil is used because it is cheap.

 

[MikeeMiracle]

Yes I think we need to be careful with a lot of these "let's just do this" where it comes to vegetation due to the knock on effects. I recall subsidies in the EU for "biofuel" to encourage "greener" alternatives to petrol. The end result of which it was more profitable for farmers to produce "biofuel" than rice and food costs shot up because of this, some EU members of parliament ended up calling the "biofuel" scheme a "crime against humanity."

 

[BillTre]

Two examples where goals were set before the details were worked:

Freon and the Ozone layer.
This was before climate issues were driven to be such a strong political issue.
Chemical replacements had to be dveloped.

Going to the Moon.
This was proposed before much of the required technology was developed.

To paraphrase Kennedy:

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win

Replace "go to the moon" with "ban palm oil".

 

[Evo]

I try to avoid buying anything that contains palm or coconut oil as they are probably the two unhealthiest fats there are. For health reasons palm oil should be banned.

Palm oil, palm kernel oil, and coconut oil — the so-called tropical oils — got a bad reputation because they're high in saturated fat, which has long been linked to heart disease. Saturated fat boosts "bad" LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, both of which are risk factors for heart disease. Palm oil, which is 50% saturated, has a more favorable fatty acid composition than palm kernel oil and coconut oil, which are more than 85% saturated. In general, the higher the saturated fat content, the more solid a fat is at room temperature. Palm oil is semisolid at room temperature but can be processed into a liquid cooking oil.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/by_the_way_doctor_is_palm_oil_good_for_you

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Orangutans are basically going extinct due to palm oil fields. Palm oil is in most peanut butters. Really sad.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/magaz...alm-oil-protecting-forests-to-help-great-apes

 

[BillTre]

Lots of other species too.

In addition, there are a lot of small freshwater fish species (that seem to be known only to hobbyists and ichthyologists) found in swamps and other environments in these areas.
As the envrionments are destroyed, they go extinct.

 

[DBoone]

Palm Oil is a cheap add-in oil mostly used to make liquid oils into semi-or- soft solids. There is a company in Spain working on a way to turn liquid oils (most mono & poly unsaturated oils we eat are liquid) into a spread. Our taste buds seem to have an affinity for saturated fats, (think butter, bacon, etc), but its worth a try. Why not ban it in the U.S.? We are obviously a big fat market, so to speak, and if that drives industry to develop ways to make unsaturated oils into spreads, it would sell well here, (disclosure, I bought some stock in the company in Spain) and maybe then China. India? Stranger things have happened.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/by_the_way_doctor_is_palm_oil_good_for_you

Hi Evo:

I find that I am unable to access the cited article since it requites a paid membership. Do you know of another (free) source for this information?

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Evo]

Hi Evo:

I find that I am unable to access the cited article since it requites a paid membership. Do you know of another (free) source for this information?

Regards,
Buzz

Hi Buzz, try this link.

https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20170209/palm-oil-the-new-fat-under-fire#1

 

[Laroxe]

Of course one of the reasons palm oil became popular was its use in the production of biodiesel, since recognised as one of the dirtiest fuels available. It was promoted by the WWF on behalf of some of their industrial sponsors and they now promote the idea of "sustainable" production while using the habitat destruction they promoted in their advertising.
The WWF is no stranger to controversy and has escaped attempts to defund it and prosecute it for some of its questionable practices, it also attracts a great deal of criticism from other conservation groups. Financially it is a powerful organisation that receives considerable government and industrial sponsorship. Its difficult to evaluate all of the criticisms, but there are many.
It might be easier to consider controlling the use of palm oil, biodiesel should certainly be banned across the world and its difficult to see why other vegetable oils could not replace its use in most other products. However the industry has some powerful defenders. This discusses some of the issues.
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog...s-conservation-model-is-ethically-wrong-65684

 

[eachus]

How about a synthetic version of palm oil derived from already available veg oil?
The fatty acid breakdown of palm oil:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0095412.t001

There is a much simpler, and more likely to work solution. Get Malaysia and Indonesia to limit exports to current levels. It would likely require some money as quid pro quo, but the importing countries could afford to pay for it by taxing imports. ;-) If you prefer, just do the import taxes, and set them at a level which takes away palm oil's cost advantage. My digestive system can't handle tropical oils, so I am not part of the problem. I've noticed over time, that many products have shifted ingredients so they can advertise no tropical oils--and gain me and others as customers.

When looking for solutions to problems like this I keep my economist's hat handy. Here the goal is to stop cutting down forests for space to grow palms (and collect the oil). There is no need for economic shocks, and the easiest way to minimize them is to reduce the incentive to cut down trees. Current plantations may have been a negative climate cost when created, but they are there now, and any solution which continues the status quo is most likely not to have other effects on the climate which might be worse.

 

[Jarvis323]

I try to avoid buying anything that contains palm or coconut oil as they are probably the two unhealthiest fats there are. For health reasons palm oil should be banned.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/by_the_way_doctor_is_palm_oil_good_for_you

On a related note, we now know that soybean oil (the main alternative to Palm, and by far the most consumed oil in the US) is likely to be causing a massive mental and physical health crisis.

https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2020/...ely-consumed-oil-causes-genetic-changes-brain

 

[some bloke]

To paraphrase Kennedy:

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win

Replace "go to the moon" with "ban palm oil".

The issue here though is that there wasn't a massive industry revolving around not going to the moon. there weren't thousands of products dependent on not going to the moon in order to achieve their profits this year.

Palm oil is, regrettably, in so much these days. It's in Dairy Milk chocolate, it's in peanut butter, in virtually any processed food or biscuit, it makes fuel... but it also contributes massively to ecological damage.

It would be great to make it just go away, but you try persuading the CEO's of Dairy Milk to take a 1% pay cut and buy the sustainable palm oil for their chocolate bars instead. They'll react as if you suggested that they go to the moon.

 

[Genava]

With what would you replace palm oil?
That question does have implications, as other crops would have to replace and become predominate, with their own particular impact upon the environment.

The biggest problem with palm oil is that its production is entirely supported by two countries, for the entire world. Alternatives to palm oil are better suited for a global consumption, by a production in multiple countries were the landscape is already strongly anthropised.

 

[Evo]

In the past decade, I've moved away from processed food, purchased cookware that is so non-stick, PFOA & PTFE free, no oil or fat needs to even be sprayed onto them to keep the food from sticking. I use a combination real butter and olive oil spread where the only ingredients are "sweet cream, olive oil, salt and sea salt" Uhm, I believe all salt is sea salt, the salt deposits on land are largely prehistoric dried seas. To me new sea salt is just extra contaminated salt, a new study found 90% of sea salt contained microplastics.

Your fancy sea salt may include a dose of microplastics. More than 90 percent of salts sold across the world contain microplastics, with the highest levels found in sea salt, a new environmental study found

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microplastics-sea-salt-from-ocean-plastic-pollution/

Back to topic, I try to avoid all processed oil in any form. I grow my own vegetables and freeze extra for winter use.

 

[Merlin3189]

By all means ban yourself from consuming palm oil, or whatever. I get very worried when you start telling other people what to eat, what to grow, what jobs to work at. It's bad enough when you do this to people in your own country, but when you tell people in other countries what to do, that moves right up the scale (of unacceptability.)
Even if you do feel you can arrogate the right to force others to follow your beliefs, you need to be very sure of your grounds and that you have considered all the ramifications of your proposed diktat.
I know nothing about palm oil, how it is produced, nor its effect on the health of people who eat it. But I would worry about the people and communities that depend on its production for their livelihoods.
Similarly I know little about any effect it may have on climate. But if you are concerned about that, Matthew 7:3 springs to mind.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I get very worried when you start telling other people what to eat, what to grow, what jobs to work at.

Are you worried about how the gov can tell you not to grow marijuana?

 

[Merlin3189]

Are you worried about how the gov can tell you not to grow marijuana?

That ban would be something I would not support, as I don't see marijuana as harmful, but your point is good.

If we think about someone growing something dangerous, or keeping dangerous animals, or setting up a factory to produce dangerous chemicals or maybe releasing such in their effluent, then certainly I'd have to support restrictions simply for my own safety.
Obviously even I have some sense that I can legitimately try to prevent others from harming me.
So it becomes a question of assessing the level of threat that justifies action.
How much I can constrain their actions and how much I should do to make myself less vulnerable, say by building better fences, is another consideration.

I suppose I was off hand in dismissing palm oil bans, because I had never perceived it as any sort of threat.

If I understand the OP, there are two aspects to the threat from palm oil.
Firstly that it has harmful effects on those who consume it. There it ranks alongside your marijuana: we ban others from consuming it, because we believe it is bad for them. It's hard to see much of a threat to me there. Maybe my taxes will be more to pay for their care? But maybe my taxes will be more to pay for enforcement of the ban? Maybe I should let them decide what's best for them.

Secondly, I think his main point, that the growing of it harms me via converting natural forest to what looks very like cultivated forest, which allegedly increases CO2 in the atmosphere, which allegedly is going to raise average atmospheric temperatures, which allegedly is going to do me some unspecified harm at some time in the future. This is of much greater concern, at least if I believe all these allegations. The problem with such an indirect process is not just that there may be weak or broken links, but there are many forks and sidelinks, where responsibility may rest elsewhere.

Why does the cultivated forest put more CO2 into the atm? Is it less efficient at converting sunlight? I doubt that. More likely Palm oil is a good crop for the very reason that it captures more CO2 than other crops. The problem may be that the sequestered CO2 is not allowed to fall to the ground and stay there, as in a rainforest. Rather it is harvested and exported to us, who release the CO2 back to the atmosphere.
So at this link we can break the chain by our own actions rather than infringing the freedom of others.

But if we are worried about the quantity of forest, we have cleared 90% of our forest (UK) to grow other crops like rapeseed (for oil). If forest is so important to us, surely the amount a country the size of US could replant would be greater than the amount other countries want to clear for their palm oil agriculture? What moral right do we have to say they must preserve in their country, to their detriment, what we have destroyed in our own for our benefit?

If we skip on to the CO2 itself: how much are we attributing to their vegetable oil agriculture? How does it compare to our contribution from mineral oil combustion? If we are concerned about CO2 levels, where should we start in reducing it? If they are concerned about CO2 levels, surely they will start by changing their agriculture, rather than banning our use of mineral oil?

And even if we manage to climb all the way up the chain to global warming and climate consequences, do we even then have any moral right to demand they sacrifice their lives to make a marginal difference? So many others (mainly us!) have contributed much more. Surely the morally proper thing to do then, is to accept whatever comes and put our own houses in order. By which I mean, build dykes and levées, dams and water distribution systems, storm-resistant, air- conditioned buildings, hydroponic farms, whatever it takes to live happily in whatever climate we have.

If I actually believed there was a clear, present and serious danger directly from these people and we had taken all reasonable measures with our own activities, I think I might have to let you take proportionate action to modify their activities. But I'd still be worried!

 

[Evo]

The problem with Palm oil is how the rain forests are being burned to clear them for planting, it is killing off many endangered rainforest animals, the orangutans, pygmy elephant, Sumatran rhino, tigers, etc...

This article sights both the pros and cons of palm oil production with the conclusion that it shouldn't be stopped, just done in a better way.

Of course we can all make personal decisions not to buy products with it, but it's in so many products right now, that would be almost impossible (IMHO).

So should we just avoid palm oil completely?

The expert Emma does not think that the solution is to do this. She thinks we should still produce and use palm oil - as it is more efficient to produce than alternative vegetable oils - but do more to make sure that the palm oil being bought and sold is sustainable and certified.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/39492207

 

[BillTre]

One consideration (primary for me) is that these islands are very dense with unique irreplaceable species, making them a biodiveristy hotspot. This is somehting shared with many rain forest areas.

The remaining natural habitat in these biodiversity hotspots amounts to just 1.4 percent of the land surface of the planet, yet supports nearly 60 percent of the world's plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species.

This species diversity is the fuel that will supply genetic differences needed to for species to adapt to their new ecological future (due to global warming) and generate the ecology.

Areas often used for these purposes are not what I would consider "cultivated forests". The areas are used for a few years, the soil fails and those using the area move on to destroy another area.
The people employed to do this might be considered itinerant workers empowered by a large global companies to despoil the forest for the profits of maga-corps.
I feel little need to support that kind of economic activity.
This product is of recent origin. Its not some legacy economic activity long established in the local area.

Removing the demand for a product (by not buying it) is not the same as telling people not to grow it.

The resulting human developed "cultivated forest" will also not likely remove CO₂ from the air as efficiently as a fully functional, naturally developed rain forest would.

 

[fresh_42]

This topic is way to broad to handle it on PF. There are many economic, socioeconomic, social, political, biological, chemical, medical, and ecological aspects, and any discussion can happily jump between them in order to find an argument against someone else's. There is no way out of this dilemma, except the agreement on disagreement.

Even a discussion of a specific paper would be a discussion that covers only parts of the dimensions mentioned above, i.e. it would still be possible to apply the rhetorical method distraction. I do not see how we could realize the extent of discipline necessary to discuss such a topic on a halfway scientific basis.

The thread is closed.