Hungary: greens split over renewables

Renewable energy is the future with electricity provided by wind energy, heating by solar and geothermic energy and cars run on biofuel, we thought. But recently some environmental organisations worldwide came up with critical opinions on renewable energy sources, especially biofuel following the plans of the European Commission to raise to 10 per cent by 2020 the use of biofuel in transportation. The argument of environmentalists is that increased production of biofuel may result in the irreversible change of the flora especially in tropical countries, where the new increased needs would further curb the territory of rain forests to give way to plants which are used in the production of biofuel. Then what happened to the pro-biofuel arguments (from that they are environmentally friendly as they do not exhaust more carbon-dioxide than what a plant consumes during its growth to contributing to the sustainability of European agricultural production)? At the moment we do not know. But the change of opinion of some environmentalist civil society organisations could have negative impact on a more general level. As the European Union tend to take civil society organisations more seriously and ask for their opinion on different issues, this new development may undermine the positive tendencies and co-operation simply because the sudden change of opinion results (or may result) in a loss of confidence. One has the feeling that some civil society organisations lack the ability to move from their stance opposing the establishment (the European Union in this case) and are afraid to share the platform even when the goals are (become) common. This type of attitude is worrying especially when one of the most important issues of our time: climate change seems to be taken more seriously by governments. But before we solve the greatest problems of our civilisation: can somebody tell (activist or official) if biofuel is good?