YR564 Hurrah! It finally uploaded!

Madge,

I just wanted to commment on the article you read about the Ethanol deal Bush made with Brasil. While I understand the doubts and fears that this deal can bring, there are other factors that have to be taken into account to be able to truly criticize it. First, Brasil is already the second largest productor of ethonal in the world after the United States, however, with a catch, our ethanol is produced from sugar cane, while the US production is corn based. Sugar cane is immensely more efficient and requires a considerably smaller amount of land to produce the same amount of ethanol one would get from corn. Basically this has allowed us to have the largest proportion of dual fuel cars (Work on just ethanol, just gasoline or a mixture of both) in the world, around 70%. The positive side of this is that ethanol pollutes much less then gasoline and is less expensive. Now, in regards to the deal with the US, we arrive on the issue of deflorestation, which is a worry if we are to meet the quantity demanded by the US in the deal. However, Brasil is an immensely large country with a lot of avaliable farm land that has no affect on the rainforest, seen as the rainforest is only located in the North/Northwestern part of the country. Also, we have extremely strict laws when it comes to the environment and deforestation, none of it is licenced by the government, and so if it were to happen it would be momstly the result of illegal farming. Now, personally I believe this could be tackled by a simple ban on the importation of ethanol produced from illegally farmed sugar cane, which is already in place in regard to products produced from slave labor. Finally, it is important to note that the US might also be responsible for the need for a greater increase in productuion, seen as it has refused to dismiss or even lower the import tarifs it charges on brasilien ethanol. What I want to make clear is that this is an important deal for Brasil, not only economically, but also politically, as we have been for the past years engaged in spreading the message of lowering green-house gases through, among other things, the use of new renouable energy sources like ethanol. So while there are of course negatives that can be found in this, there are also many positives which I don’t find fair to disregard.

I love the program and listen to it religiously…keep it up!

Ciao!

I remember living in San Fran during the time the Dot Com bomb happened. I was there! … and I remember seeing bus loads of people loose their jobs and leave the city. I also remember everyone saying “that would never happen …I’m making way too much money!” – Remember the Pets.com doggy puppet commercial? The company I was working at created it. (btw, I broke that damn puppet too) Pets.com = gone, alone with hundreds of others… Like you said Madge… It is going to happen!! – If we dont wake up soon… “are economy will crash!!” – Wake-up America!

Luv U and best wishes – Dag

America can wake up, but I think it’s a bit too late…the economy is headed for the crapper, actually we are already in the crapper floating around just waiting to be flushed. Our government is following in the same footsteps as so many others that have crashed and wrecked the society they governed….looks like the rats are all leaving the ship (DICK CHENEY) watch now as American companies start to head out in even
bigger numbers to foreign countries, and foreign companies start to buy up more American assets…yay globalization

I got this e-mail article from an environmental group, that talks about the American/Western economic model, and why it’s beginning to fail. Christ, it’s wordy! But he makes some interesting points (if you can get to them):

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/49593/