Al Gore on Sugarcane Ethanol

On January 28, 2009, Al Gore spoke at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Global Climate Change. In this video from C-Span Gore responded to a question about ethanol's impact on rainforests. Here's the transcript:

SEN DODD (D-CT): I had a comment on the Brazilian effort here with the issue of the possibility of expanding into that Amazon River basin, with further deforestation, to produce more ethanol out of sugar cane is a worry. Apparently, you're not as concerned about that.

GORE: No, I am. Thank you for giving -- I didn't answer it and I thank you for giving me another chance. I simply forgot. President Lula has recently proposed, on the eve of the Poznan negotiation last December, a truly impressive large short-term goal of avoiding the deforestation pattern that has been so prominent in the Amazon. What's been going on there is really very troubling and, with your permission, I'll show you a very quick example of it from the western Amazon basin over a period of 25 years. (VIDEO PRESENTATION SHOWING DESTRUCTION OF AMAZON.) President Lula's proposal is to stop thoughtless destruction of valuable areas of rain forests. And it's important to note that the exploitation of the sugar cane growing areas in Brazil, which gives a highly efficient source of ethanol, that's efficient economically and in terms of energy balance, does not have to inevitably have the knock-on consequence of causing destruction in the Amazon. It's a different area of Brazil and with the kind of policy innovation that President Lula has proposed, I believe they can, if they enforce it -- that's been one of the problems with past initiatives -- if they enforce it, I think that they can continue to provide global leadership on ethanol production and avoid deforestation.

Source: http://www.cspan.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-R-14776

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