Submit Comments to the Department of Energy before March 17th, 2015
Tell the Department of Energy:
No Genetically Engineered Trees or Crops for Biofuels in the Southeast!
The Department of Energy (DOE) has released a Programmatic draft Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to determine whether to use $36 million of taxpayer money to test genetically engineered (GE) and hybrid crops in the Southeastern US for bioenergy.
The DOE believes without this government funding, production of liquid biofuels and biomass will not increase at a fast enough rate to meet it’s Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) 2007 mandates for renewable fuel.
• GE plants they are considering include trees such as Eucalyptus, Pine, Spruce, Willow and Poplar, as well as grasses, sugarcane, sugar beets, jatropha and other crops.
• The PEIS evaluates these GE plants at the development scale of up to 5 acre contained plots, pilot scale of up to 250 acre contained plots and the demonstration scale of up to 15,000 acre contained plots.
• The DOE has essentially found no significant impact for any level of the proposed project, and what impacts may occur from issues such as fire hazard increase, they predict will be offset by best management practices (BMP).
• The PEIS downplays the water sucking and flammability traits of GE eucalyptus plantations, the flammability of loblolly pine plantations engineered for greatly increased terpene levels, invasiveness of trees, grasses and non-native species, genetic contamination of wild plants, impact to threatened and endangered species, and socio-economic impacts.
The DOE and their partner agencies falsely portray the program’s mission-to promote large-scale industrial development of Genetically Engineered High Energy Crops (EHECs) as “good for climate and a path to energy independence.”
To recieve news and updates on this DOE process, e-mail nogetrees-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
Submit Comments on the draft PEIS before March 17th, 2015
EHEC Website: https://engineeredhighenergycropspeis.com
E-mail: comments@engineeredhighenergycropsPEIS.com
Find the Programmatic draft Environmental Impact Statement here:
Tell the Department of Energy:
No Genetically Engineered Trees or Crops for Biofuels in the Southeast!
Produced by Global Justice Ecology Project and Biofuelwatch