The Renewable Diesel Scam with Gary Hughes

Can converting petroleum refineries into renewable diesel production truly serve as a green alternative, or is it merely greenwashing? Join us this week on Breaking Green as we tackle this controversial issue with Gary Hughes from Biofuelwatch. Gary reveals the significant risks and threats posed by industrial bioenergy projects, including their impacts on land, forests, ecosystems, food sovereignty, and human rights. We also explore Biofuelwatch's mission and their recent victories, like opposing a geoengineering project and advocating for indigenous communities in Chile.

Is greenwashing misleading the public about what’s truly sustainable? Gary Hughes of Biofuelwatch and I uncover how fossil fuel giants exploit biofuels and renewable diesel to maintain their environmentally damaging practices. These companies gain carbon credits while the global south suffers deforestation and heavy pesticide use in soy cultivation. We discuss the insidious nature of climate colonialism and the influence of neoliberal economic expansion on climate policy, especially in California.

In the final segment, we question the ethics and practicality of solar geoengineering as a climate solution. With Gary's insights into the billionaire class's fascination with technological fixes over real emission reductions, we critique the normalization of geoengineering and its potential catastrophic impacts. We also highlight the environmental crises in Chile, from wildfires to severe flooding, and the ongoing efforts of Global Justice Ecology Project to advocate for environmental justice. Tune in for a engaging conversation on the socio-environmental challenges we face and the urgent need for genuine solutions.

This podcast is produced by Global Justice Ecology Project.

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Transcript

Steve Taylor: 0:00

Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. On Breaking Green, we will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, steve Taylor. Industry is pushing for a conversion of two of the five refineries in Sacramento, california, into what is called renewable diesel made from biomass. But is it renewable or just another bait and switch, which is equally damaging to the environment and which will create dramatic impacts on frontline communities? On this episode of Breaking Green, we will talk with Gary Hughes of Biofuel Watch about his work opposing so-called renewable diesel in the Bay Area. We will also discuss with Gary Biofuel Watch's recent victory in opposing a geoengineering project and his recent trip into Mapuche territory in Chile.

Steve Taylor: 1:10

Gary Hughes is an experienced outdoor educator and political organizer who has been involved with climate justice, human rights and environmental protection campaigns in the United States as well as internationally. Over decades, gary has gained experience living and working in Nicaragua, ecuador, chile and Mexico and has traveled extensively throughout North and South America. He currently works as the Americas Program Coordinator with the international civil society organization BioFuel Watch, whose fiscal sponsor is Global Justice Ecology Project. Gary did his master's degree in the Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Program at the University of Montana. He currently lives in Northern California with his family. Gary Hughes, welcome to Breaking Green.

Gary Hughes: 2:02

Steve, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. This is definitely one of my favorite shows these days.

Steve Taylor: 2:09

Well, good to hear. Thank you, Gary. Look, could you tell us about Biofuel Watch?

Gary Hughes: 2:21

Biofuel Watch is an international organization, and our mission is focused on increasing and strengthening community engagement on industrial bioenergy projects. Bioenergy presents a whole host of risks and threats to the land sector, to forests, to native ecosystems, but it can also impact food sovereignty and certainly can have a lot of impacts on human rights and environmental democracy. So we work across a broad spectrum of different bioenergy technologies and bioenergy issues, but always with the main purpose of increasing community engagement. And, in particular, we try to work with frontline communities that are having to shoulder the burden of these bioenergy schemes that are unfortunately oftentimes being incentivized and promoted as a climate solution.

Steve Taylor: 3:27

Well, you're familiar with the program. One of our focuses is on false solutions, so let's talk a little bit about refineries. You've been working with some refineries in California, so tell us a little bit about that.

Gary Hughes: 3:44

Yeah, let's dive right into one of the biggest pieces of work that's on my desk, and that is specifically the conversion of two of the five petroleum refineries located in the San Francisco Bay Area to manufacturing liquid biofuels to manufacturing liquid biofuels making fuels from feedstocks like animal tallow canola oil and then predominantly from soy.

Gary Hughes: 4:16

And this issue emerged strongly during the pandemic, when the fact that people in California, andia and beyond were consuming less fuel, less gasoline, less jet fuel uh, what industry called uh demand destruction. The refineries in the bay area were put into a little bit of a squeeze play and one of them even closed down. The Marathon Refinery closed down because they couldn't operate at a low level, and the Phillips 66 Refinery in Rodeo reduced their production enormously. And then it was, as I was saying, four years ago then in August 2022, that Phillips 66 announced a new project to convert their refinery in Rodeo to being the largest biofuel refinery on the planet, and shortly after that, marathon came forth with a similar plan. And so it's been four years of wrestling, with some really skewed governance and a lot of disinformation and some very industry-friendly politics at a local and state level.

Steve Taylor: 5:28

So what is objectionable when it comes to converting from a fossil fuel refinery to a biofuel refinery?

Gary Hughes: 5:39

Gary, Well, for our organization, Biofuel Watch. One of the things we try to flag for communities and for people interested in these topics is to watch out for elected officials and agency representatives taking refuge in the political convenience of converting fossil fuel infrastructure to bioenergy infrastructure. It can be painted and framed as though these are efforts at decarbonization, but there's really a lot of evidence now that shows that relying on bioenergy is equally damaging to the climate and create even more dramatic impacts for frontline communities where land is being utilized for making the feedstocks, whether it be soy or a monoculture plantation for wood. So you know, first and foremost, we try to flag for people that they need to be cautious about how it sounds like such an easy solution to switch from burning fossil fuels to making bioenergy projects, because it's nothing but easy. But we'll go into some details here about what some of the specific concerns are, about converting petroleum refineries to making liquid biofuels.

Steve Taylor: 7:08

Yeah, I imagine there's probably some local concerns where the refinery is at, but then you also mentioned concerns where the feed stock are the tree plantations.

Gary Hughes: 7:35

Is it tree plantations? You're talking about Gary. Tree plantations Is it tree plantations? You're talking about Gary? But we at Biofuel Watch have again and again watched dog projects that made huge promises about being able to make, for instance, an aviation fuel from woody biomass, and it can't be done at scale. So you know that's one of the bioenergy unicorns, with the conversion of refineries to making these liquid biofuels. Essentially, we are seeing that what we would call the unholy matrimony between big oil and big ag, and there is a really heavy pivot in California to making a product that's called renewable diesel. This is being incentivized by climate policy here in the state.

Gary Hughes: 8:28

Renewable diesel isn't renewable, even though its name implies. Renewable diesel is not biodiesel. A lot of people may have been exposed to a biodiesel product that would be blended with a petroleum diesel to be sold as biodiesel. Renewable diesel is a drop-in liquid biofuel. When I say drop-in, it means it's a diesel fuel that is chemically identical to the diesel that is made from petroleum, and thus it requires no modification in any way whatsoever of the diesel engine.

Gary Hughes: 9:08

It can still be blended with petroleum diesel. I mean it's chemically identical and over these last four years, since the pandemic 2020, when these two refineries announced their plans to convert the refineries to largely making this renewable diesel. We've seen an absolute explosion in the production of this fuel and especially the consumption of this fuel in California. So it's not just these two refineries that are doing it. There are smaller refineries all around the country now that are making renewable diesel from soy, distilled corn oil or from animal tallow and then they're shipping that refined product to California and it's sold and consumed here and that therefore qualifies under the low carbon fuel standard for a carbon market incentive. But I think I really want to make sure listeners know and can distinguish and hear the name renewable diesel and be skeptical about it being characterized as renewable, but to know that this is a diesel fuel that is identical to the diesel fuel that is made from petroleum and therefore it can just be used broadly.

Steve Taylor: 10:32

So if it is identical, I mean, does it have the same when it's burned? Does it have the same concern when it comes to putting off carbon?

Gary Hughes: 10:42

There are still lots of issues with the emissions, the carbon emissions. It's. Still emits carbon when burned, but because it's a biofuel and it's characterized under the low carbon fuel standard as so-called carbon neutral actually believe it or not the emissions from the tailpipe are granted a complete waiver from carbon accounting. It's the same thing with burning woody biomass at a plant that's co-firing biomass with coal or that has begun to substitute coal with biomass. That the emissions from the smokestack aren't counted under international carbon accounting rules. It doesn't mean that these emissions aren't still going into the atmosphere. So there are still lots of emissions from these fuels, but because of carbon accounting tricks, regulators and the project proponents are able to contend that they're particularly low carbon or low emissions. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Steve Taylor: 11:51

It's an accounting, a carbon accounting scheme is what you're telling us.

Gary Hughes: 11:57

There's gimmicks, definitely for the carbon accounting.

Gary Hughes: 12:01

So to break it down into kind of simple buckets for understanding the climate impacts from the conversion of these two refineries here in the San Francisco Bay Area to making the liquid biofuels is first, is that most all stakeholders admit that the science around studying the emissions from the land, use change, the land impacts from, for instance, growing soy, or also recognizing the fact that the soy agro-industrial model continues to expand further and further and into pristine native ecosystems and forested landscapes.

Gary Hughes: 12:44

So there's a lack of real, accurate accounting of the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of the feedstocks and the transport of those feedstocks.

Gary Hughes: 12:54

But the other thing that we've learned by looking at this very closely from a refinery-centric point of view is that these refineries are essentially just using the same old technology that they used for making a product out of petroleum, the so-called hydrocrackers. They're using, for instance, soy oil in the hydrocracker, but to make this renewable diesel that's chemically identical to a diesel that's made from petroleum requires phenomenal amounts of hydrogen. That's where the hydrocracker comes from, and all these refineries both have hydrogen producing facilities where they make the hydrogen from the steam reformation of methane gas or fossil gas, or what's popularly known as natural gas. So making this liquid biofuel at a refinery like the phillips 66 refinery is incredibly emissions intensive very high carbon dioxide emissions associated with the making of the hydrogen, phenomenal amounts of hydrogen to actually make the fuel and really lots and lots of feedstock. So per barrel of refined fuel, making the fuel, the biofuel from soy, is way more emissions intensive than even making the fuel from petroleum.

Steve Taylor: 14:27

What is their motivation for moving to the biofuel? I guess, is my question, Gary.

Gary Hughes: 14:34

Well, the first motivation, the most important motivation, and one that the California Air Resources Board the state agency that's responsible for the low carbon fuel standard and that has invested so much politically in making this move towards liquid biofuels has admitted the primary motive is actually to protect these big energy corporations from the expenses that they will confront with the eventual decommissioning of these antiquated and archaic facilities. So, basically, you have to understand the conversion of refineries to making biofuels in the context of stranded assets. These are stranded assets. We're, you know, moving away from fossil fuels. At least that's what the authorities tell us. Many climate advocates will say that we're making that move. I tend to be a little bit more sober about that, but you know, the state regulator, in this instance the California Air Resources Board, has stepped up to protect these big companies from having to wrestle with stranded assets.

Steve Taylor: 15:43

So it sounds to me a bit like a rebranding, a greenwashing, somewhat analogous to this push for miniature nuclear power plants, to rebrand nuclear power as green. Would you agree with that?

Gary Hughes: 15:59

There's a very strong element of marketing in all of this.

Gary Hughes: 16:03

There's definitely a really unfortunate threat of greenwashing when a big fossil fuel company can say hey, we're making these liquid biofuels that are being blessed by the state of California under the low carbon fuel standard because these are low emissions fuels and they're getting protected by the state that doesn't want to hear or recognize the evidence about how these are high emissions fuels with high deforestation risk.

Gary Hughes: 16:37

Yes, there's a lot of greenwashing going on here, and even as we see a real explosion in the real world of the production and consumption of these fuels, we also have come to the conclusion that there's a really strong fossil fuel lock-in tied in to the development of the biofuel refinery project in Martinez. Of green capitalism, there's not one media outlet that has covered the fact that Neste, this Finnish company, is investing $1 billion in a supposed decarbonization project right here in the Bay Area. That irony aside, what we also want listeners to know is that Neste, a transnational company that makes quite a big deal of their making of liquid biofuels and, in particular, renewable diesel, and they do a lot of marketing and greenwash around that element. 50% of their business is still fossil energy, straight up fossil energy. So we see a lot of issues with fossil lock-in with the growth of production and use of liquid biofuels.

Steve Taylor: 18:14

Well, there's a lot of accounting schemes with carbon credits overall.

Gary Hughes: 18:19

Yeah, the low-carbon fuel standard requires the producer of petroleum-based fuel to purchase credits from someone who's ostensibly producing a low carbon fuel that gains credits under the low carbon fuel standard. So a company like Phillips 66 is able to offset their fossil fuel production now with the making of the liquid biofuels. So it's kind of really good business for them internally.

Steve Taylor: 18:51

You mentioned environmental impacts. I mean, so you have to feed the biofuel industry with biomass. What does that look like? And if this industry is successful in producing more or, you know, I guess, transitioning to this so-called renewable biofuel, which we know it isn't, what would that look like? Or what does that look like? What communities would be impacted when it comes to finding where to get this biomass? It has to come from somewhere.

Gary Hughes: 19:28

Yes, certainly, and this is where, once again, we find that the real world evidence is really quite incriminating. And you'll have a lot of stakeholders talk about the what ifs of someday, like deforestation risk might be a risk someday, but we contend right now that the evidence shows that the deforestation risk is right now. And in particular, for instance, phillips 66, just in December of 2023, while the environmental review of their refinery conversion project was still underway, they didn't even have all the permits yet, but they applied for what's called a fuel pathway application to make renewable diesel, specifically from soy oil imported by Ocean Tanker to their refinery in Rodeo here in San Francisco, in the San Francisco Bay Area, from Argentina. So that would mean that immediately, the issue of the soy agro industry expansion into fragile forest ecosystems in Argentina is at play. That's why soy is considered a high deforestation risk commodity. But also the way that the soy industry is structured in Southern South America and the way soybeans are moved to Argentina from jurisdictions like Brazil and, in particular, paraguay, so that the soybeans can be crushed into soy oil for export.

Gary Hughes: 21:06

That this fuel pathway that the state of California is giving Phillips 66 low carbon fuel credits for will include soy from all of these really frontline forest ecosystem areas that are being hammered, really by the expansion of the soy agro industry model. So there's a lot of deforestation. We can say that's already happening. That can be associated with the import of soy from South America to make this fuel in California and that's an environmental impact. What we'd also like to flag for everyone is the public health impacts, because over this last bit of time, with the assistance of colleagues with Global Forest Coalition and Friends of the, the sprayed people because of the aggressive use of pesticides and the way that the model for soy is totally reliant on the genetically modified, roundup-ready soy. So there's huge amounts of pesticides being used in the cultivation of this soy and the public health crisis is immense. It really is manifesting itself in some of the worst ways people can imagine in terms of cancers climate policy, which tries to paint these fuels as somehow climate friendly.

Steve Taylor: 23:19

You know, these false solutions seem to disproportionately impact the global south. In many ways it just seems to be a rule.

Gary Hughes: 23:26

It's climate colonialism, there's no question about it whatsoever.

Gary Hughes: 23:30

And that is why I've been working with Biofuel Watch for a short while and it's why that the directors of the organization asked me to contribute to their community effort, to our small civil society effort, because we've recognized that Sacramento, California, is a theater of operations for all of the biggest extractivist corporations on the planet, and these are oftentimes entities with pretty extensive operations in the global south.

Gary Hughes: 24:03

But they know that if they can paint some of their extraction is ostensibly climate friendly in California, they'll be able to use that precedent on beyond and that's where we've seen, you know, Bayer which bought Monsanto. Actually, you know lobbying in Sacramento in promotion of making fuels from soy. They see it as really good business and they're trying to set things up here in California to protect themselves and ultimately very cynically. This is where I, you know, have come to the conclusion that, unfortunately, a great part of climate policy on a global level is really just a tool of neoliberal economic expansion and these interests have been really effective at appropriating the concerns that the public have about climate and try to then cloak their interests extraction in that vocabulary and, as you were saying, greenwash it.

Steve Taylor: 25:11

Gary, I also wanted to talk to you about some of your work with the city of Alameda. The city council voted to call off the University of Washington's Marine Cloud Brightening Project, which had been conducting geoengineering experiments in California. Your organization, biofuel Watch, I believe, indigenous Environmental Network, hands Off Mother Earth were very involved in getting the city council I believe it is to cancel that project.

Gary Hughes: 25:46

For Biofuel Watch, I have been asked to take on a number of different roles to be at the cutting edge of these false solution politics, and one of those roles has been to participate in the steering committee of the Hands Off Mother Earth Alliance. And HOME, as we call it, is the global campaign against geoengineering. And for Biofuel Watch, because of our focus on bioenergy, a lot of our real effort on geoengineering tends to focus on the carbon dioxide removal technologies, a lot of the bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, a lot of those technologies. But also I've worked quite a bit around solar geoengineering. I predict that solar geoengineering will probably be one of the defining climate justice issues of the late 2020s. I think we've only kind of started to see how it's emerging. I think we've only kind of started to see how it's emerging. But what is happening and as we saw then in Alameda, is that there's a lot of really big tech money, in particular, silicon Valley tech money, going into trying to develop these technologies frame of the world. If they can find some way to engineer the climate, then they can avoid coming to grips with their outlandish wealth and the inequity that's clearly associated with the way that economy is working for the world.

Gary Hughes: 27:27

And so there was an outfit called Silver Lining. That is a very newly appeared not-for-profit organization registered here in the United States that has collaborated with the University of Washington and then also with a very, very powerful and very big money research and development not-for-profit organization called SRI International, and they began to collaborate with a museum on an old aircraft carrier that is docked in Alameda. The island of Alameda was for many decades one of the biggest military bases in the United States. Most of that military activity has totally gone away, but the city's gone about redeveloping some of those properties. Some of it's very interesting, but in this instance Silver Lining went ahead and started doing a project, which was more a kind of public relations stunt, where they wanted to show people how they were going to spray and measure salt aerosols in order that they could begin to estimate how they could use these aerosols in a technology that would ostensibly increase the albedo effect of clouds so that it could reflect solar energy away from the planet and ostensibly cool the planet. This type of solar geoengineering is well proven to be likely very dangerous for ecosystems and communities, likely to not cool the planet but simply to continue to change the climate of the planet and Silver Lining went ahead and started this experiment and then went forth with a massive media outreach campaign and they got coverage in all sorts of outlets Politico and then the New York Times and the members of the Alameda City Council learned about the experiment through reading about it in the paper and they were a little bit alarmed, to say the least, and they put a halt on the experiment and asked city staff of the city of Alameda to do a June 4th with the goal for the city staff and the project proponents to get the city council members to give their consent for the continuing of the experiment.

Gary Hughes: 30:25

And, as it worked out, I was able to actually make it to that city of Alameda city council meeting. I'm living here in the Bay and I put forth actually, a number of arguments regarding the importance of inclusivity and interdisciplinary approaches and transparency and really flagged the concerns about governance with this experiment and what it would mean for the future and as well. There were other participants in the Hands Off Mother Earth Coalition who participated. You mentioned Indigenous Environmental Network. They got in an excellent letter just before the meeting that had an impact on city council members. The Center for International Environmental Law has been a really important part of Hands Off Mother Earth. Friends of the Earth.

Gary Hughes: 31:16

United States has begun to work on these geoengineering issues, and a number of other really important organizations Ocean Care, james Carey from Australia was able to make a virtual comment and we were able to flag a whole host of concerns about not only this specific experiment and how the proponents had gone about doing their business with this, but exactly what the ramifications were. To begin to get more socially normalized, which is what I argued this experiment was really all about. More than gathering scientific information. They were hoping to basically approach thousands of people every year who visit the USS Hornet to try to tell people that you know, we don't need to actually reduce emissions or reduce our impact on the planet. We're going to engineer a way to make the clouds more reflective and that's how we'll deal with climate change, which is a very, very dangerous mindset.

Gary Hughes: 32:33

But, as I said, I contend that solar geoengineering is going to be one of the defining environmental issues of the late 2020s, and I know that you've had other guests on Breaking Green to talk about these issues. Some of those interviews are really worth listening if people haven't checked those out yet Because, as an old school forest offender, I find it to be very bizarre and almost surreal that I'm now working on challenging these engineering type approaches to climate. You know, 35, 35 years ago, sitting under the old growth that was slated to be clear-cut, we used to kind of you know? Joke about where all of this was going, where the earth destruction could be going. And here it is. It's uh. People, uh really, are totally bought into their kind of tech grifter approach, thinking that they can manipulate the atmosphere to address climate change, when all the evidence shows that the impacts would be devastating for ecosystems and communities.

Steve Taylor: 33:45

I think you're right that this is going to be a huge issue. If you want to talk about colonialism, who gets to decide what the weather will be? I mean, let's just look at the history. Probably some nations in the global south are not going to get the better part of it If you have these fixes and then, let's say, 100, 200 years from now, people quit doing it for whatever reason. Maybe there's political will, economic problems, maybe societal collapse. It's going to be somewhat of a boomerang effect.

Steve Taylor: 34:22

That's the termination shock is the term. Termination shock.

Gary Hughes: 34:44

Well, gary, that's why we have you on the show. Modeling shows that that kind of intervention in the atmosphere could actually, and would likely, raise temperatures in certain areas. So this contention that it's going to cool the planet is based on just an assumption. But putting all of that aside, saying that they could find some way to make this technology work, you are totally correct. There's all sorts of factors and volatilities out there, and if you suddenly stop that kind of intervention, then all of the heating that you've kind of put off for a while will come back all at once and termination shock. It sounds like science fiction and it is. And again, I'm an old school forest defender. I still thing to contemplate working on these geoengineering issues now, but you know, no, it's not.

Gary Hughes: 36:00

For a long time we thought it was fossil fuel interest that was driving this, and I think 20 years ago some of the early emergence of the ideas of solar geoengineering could be associated with fossil fuel interests. But now it's really clear that the fossil capital is there, but it's kind of fringe. It's really the Silicon Valley billionaires that are pushing this. And that's where I think, without going into too much depth, but I think there's an increasing amount of awareness of the very dangerous worldviews that this billionaire class from Silicon Valley has right now, attentive to the failures, the really high profile failures companies like Theranos with Elizabeth Holmes, sam Bankman-Fried and all the fraud. We should have our guard up very high about letting this class of people begin to gain too much credibility, suggesting that they're going to be able to engineer our way out of the climate crisis.

Steve Taylor: 37:16

It's fascinating, Gary, that you bring up that billionaire class there's a lot of interest also in that class of, let's say, going to Mars and living on Mars. I mean, and frankly I mean, the radiation situation on Mars is such that that's just. It just seems strange to me that there's so much interest in going to Mars and terraforming Mars when we can't even take care of this planet. It just seems far-fetched, it seems to be vainglorious, a bit egotistical.

Gary Hughes: 37:57

Hubris is the word that always comes to mind.

Steve Taylor: 38:00

There you go. I like that one.

Gary Hughes: 38:03

Yep, just this weekend I got the opportunity once again to get in. There's not a lot of old-growth redwood left once again to get in. You know, there's not a lot of old growth redwood left and sometimes, even when you're in what's left you can see the impacts of the edge effect and how the forest is a remnant really of what it was. But when I'm deep in the redwoods and I'm marveling at the miracle of life, I have to really question the worldview of people who believe arrogantly that they can engineer nature better than what nature has already proven it can do. It is a concern to me that these people are so detached from the planet itself, detached from the people that live close to the land, and I think, as I said, these next five years are going to be really interesting. But I think issues like solar geoengineering are just going to get thrust in our face and we have to be very, very careful because there's going to be a lot of proponents get thrust in our face and we have to be very, very careful because there's going to be a lot of proponents. There's going to be a lot of media that is going to be saying oh hey, we've got a solution for you. And that's what we found. We were able to stop silver lining with their experiment in the city of Alameda and we, in retrospect, found it incredible because we noticed that Politico was supporting them, we noticed that New York Times was supporting them, we noticed they had all sorts of media suggesting that their, you know, research was of, you know, huge importance, and those of us who are putting up resistance were, you know, ignorant and anti-science. And you know, I think we just have to be prepared there's going to be an onsite and this is what we've seen with greenwashing and false solutions all along is that there's really powerful economic interests that will do anything they can to manipulate the public understanding of what these issues are and try to present technological solutions as the road to follow, because then no one has to challenge their wealth, no one has to challenge the increasing concentration of political power that's associated with our wealth.

Gary Hughes: 40:18

But those of us who've been working on these issues for decades and we know that inclusiveness is central and we're working with communities on the ground all over the world and learning from them we know full well that there is no engineering solution. We're not facing a crisis that can be solved with technology. This is a moral and ethical challenge that we're confronting, and we need to approach it with real ethics. And this is where putting our hands in the dirt and touching earth, I think, is one of the best ways for us to do our work every day. Um, even though it's not always possible for me, I try, and I know lots of people who are listening will do the same um, whether it's just working in the garden or dealing with some firewood, to stay close to the earth and remember where it is that we're from.

Steve Taylor: 41:19

Could you tell us briefly, because we're running out of time, about your recent trip to Chile?

Gary Hughes: 41:26

Yeah, I was really lucky to travel back to Chile in April of this year, 2024. And I had been there in 2019 with the team from Global Justice Ecology Project. We did a really sobering tour through the BOBO region of Chile Hualmapu, the heart of Mapuche territory and learned a great deal about what is going on with companies like Arauco and their management of plantations and their new giant pulp plant in Orcones, and the increasing militarization of the area as the Chilean state relies on the military to protect the plantation assets of these companies. I learned a great deal and we didn't get into it much on the show today but, working closely with Global Justice Ecology Project and you, steve, we're really excited because we know that later this year the team from Global Justice Ecology Project as well is going to get down to Chile and to keep working on documenting what's happening on the ground and making visible to the world what the impacts are of an industry that's kind of slipped out of view a little bit because of the important but increasing focus on fossil fuels and such.

Gary Hughes: 43:00

But the pulp industry and the biomass industry and this wood products industry is still wrecking incredible havoc. There is a major issue in the summers of Chile now with wildfire, but just now, just this week, we've been getting lots of images and news from the flooding that's happening, from really heavy rains, but entire watersheds that have been converted to these monoculture plantations that have no capacity for retaining water in any way whatsoever. So there's a lot of social and environmental pollution from this model and I'm glad to just do a flyby on it now on Breaking Green to alert regular listeners to the fact that this is a topic for sure that will be visited again in the future in this podcast and that for sure global justice ecology project and biofuel watch will keep doing what we can to raise awareness about what's happening in in walamapu well.

Steve Taylor: 44:01

Thank you so very much for joining us today at breaking green gary hughes well, thank you very much, steve. This has been great you have been listening to breaking green a global justice ecology project podcast. Well, thank you very much, steve. This has been great, thank you.