orangs and your stupid f-ing SUV

Make no mistake: ethanol and bio-fuels can not be anything more than a very temporary and very limited stop gap on our road to fuel efficiency.

Indonesia and Malaysia together produce 83 percent of the world’s palm oil. In 2004, the Indonesian government released a plan calling for the conversion of 40,000 square miles of Borneo to palm plantations by the end of the decade.

Borneo currently supports the largest surviving wild orangutan population. However, environmental groups fear this may not be true for much longer, as the primates are rapidly losing their habitat due to the deforestation. They are also often beaten by plantation workers. Lone Nielsen, head of Borneo Orangutan Survival, says the group sees orangutans with “broken bones, cracked skulls, burns, internal injuries… The plantation workers beat them because they want to catch them and the only way you can catch an orangutan is to knock it unconscious.”

And it's not simply the loss of one species, the orangutans, that is the problem here - it's the globally-repeated willful destruction of the last vestiges of wilderness to fuel the short-term interests of those who think oil is bad, but who don't want to simply conserve and become more efficient. Countries like Brazil and Indonesia will happily mow under the last preserve, at the behest of Western multi-nationals, to slake our thirst for energy. Please use less.