Why do rainforests get chopped down? The answer is in your lunch box. Palm oil is used in margarine, chocolate and most processed foods. It is the most widely used vegetable oil because it is the cheapest to produce and refine. It is hardly healthy, but has become a key component of the western diet. To flourish, palms need a very hot and humid environment. In other words, they need a rainforest climate.
Yet deforestation has harmful consequences. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a pollutant, from the atmosphere. If there are fewer trees, then less is absorbed. This is compounded by the burning of the felled trees, which produces further quantities of the gas. Indeed, tropical deforestation is estimated to account for about 15 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.
A new study by Forum for the Future, an organisation led by the former director of Friends of the Earth and environmental adviser to Prince Charles, Jonathon Porritt, is expected to accept that the demands of the food industry and green activists are irreconcilable. We should therefore, Mr Porritt argues, simply accept that deforestation is inevitable, and encourage palm oil producers to be as sustainable as possible.
Since it was funded by a consortium of palm oil companies, we ought to be suspicious of the pro-palm findings of Mr Porritt’s research. But an end to deforestation is clearly fanciful unless there is a worldwide conversion to Gwyneth Paltrow’s palaeolithic diet. Instead, we should review where palms are being planted, and in what quantity.
This would probably entail blocking attempts to deforest in some countries. We can ignore Mr Porritt’s bizarre claim this would be “cultural imperialism”. Managing rainforests is a great responsibility. If some countries are unable to bear it reliably, we must tell them how — for the whole world’s sake.