The elderly gentleman leaned forward conspiratorially and sotto voce declared, ‘The Second Generation is only months away.’ In the vast hall his words were as mere droplets in the vastness of the ocean. But I heard them and I felt privileged, one of the chosen few. Others spoke of ‘cleansing’, ‘biomass’ and ‘hybrids‘.

I had not infiltrated a factory churning out the next series of cyborgs: this was the Biofuels market at the Brussels Expo. A man was explaining to me that he was in vegetable oil for diesel when the tannoy announced that the conference was about to begin, a call to prayer at the size 11s of none other than Al Gore, former VP of a very large corporation. Al’s reinvented himself, becoming the spokesman for his generation on the hottest ticket in every Western town - global warming.

Here he was surely preaching to the converted, a congregation made up of the movers and shakers of the Biofuels industry. An expression from his country springs to mind - No Brainer. You would think. But it seems that many people are still not listening, like two men bang slap in the middle of the road arguing over just how long it will take the juggernaut to flatten them.

Al Gore's The Inconvenient Truth

The second speaker began with, ‘No-one wants to be second to Al Gore but then again he knows better than anyone what it’s like to come second.’ Having brought the house down he proceeded with the aid of slides to demonstrate how diesel made from corn and sugar cane could bridge the gap in the next 20 years, providing an adequate source of fuel and dramatically reducing global warming. And so save the planet.

After 3 hours of speeches, I was perplexed by the Science (not my strong point) and unconvinced by the source of this new religion. There is no question that we are making a soup of the planet, that the icecaps will melt and head in our direction and that transportation is the biggest gas-guzzling culprit. Great emphasis was placed on security, access to oil and gas in ‘insecure parts of the world’. So a global problem has been reduced once more to Them and Us.

algae into fuel

Doug is part of this next generation. His big thing is algae. ‘Our algae-to-biofuel technology mass produces algae, extracts the vegetable oil and refines it into a cost-effective, non-polluting diesel biofuel.  The beauty of algae is that it can be grown anywhere and doesn’t use up all that valuable land‘.

An American scientist informed me that the US Airforce has been ordered to use only edible fuel in its fighter jets and even that has to come from an American source. A stand-up comic once said that America should just keep its planes orbiting the planet and alternately drop either bombs or food. Now those bombers are being fuelled by the very corn it used to drop on the starving millions. Dig For Victory has taken on a whole new meaning.

Al Gore

It’s a Big Idea, it’s a big sell. Asking farmers to turn their arable land over to crops better suited to fuel production and telling the public that most of what is in their fridge could power their cars.

Al borrowed industry’s boiling frog analogy - a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough - to highlight people’s ignorance towards global warming. Is it ignorance or is it that Money will decide when it‘s ready. ‘Have you noticed how many banks are present this year?’ asked Swedish delegate Camilla Dowling of OKQ8. Present this year at the market, the Chicago Board of Trade has already set up a Future’s market in these new fuels. ‘The money’s sniffing around,’ she added. It will have to inhale very deeply to meet Big Al’s deadline of 20 years.

It’s a big idea, it’s a big gamble and, as we all know, gambling’s a mug’s game.

Paul Morris
Editor
Expatica Belgium

12 March 2007

[Copyright Expatica 2007]