Interested in Indirect Land Use Changes?? - check out "Amazon Crude" on '60 Minutes'

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/01/60minutes/main4983549.shtml?source=mostpop_story
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Texaco was a partner with Ecuador's national oil company, Petroecuador. And over 23 years, Texaco pumped out one and a half billion barrels of oil. Hundreds of wells were drilled. And at each well site, pits were dug to hold toxic oil waste that comes up during drilling.
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"They put these pipes in the side (of the pit dikes_JW)). So that as it rains, it fills up with water, contaminated water, it just dumps out into the jungle," Beltman explained.

"Well, it rains here in the rainforest all the time, so there's water pouring out of it now. And if you smell the water, you can clearly smell the oil pollution in it. Runs right down the ravine, where you are, and right down into the stream, not 50 yards down that way," Pelley observed.

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Chevron says Texaco cleaned 162 pits. But the court expert, Richard Cabrera, puts the total number of all waste pits at 916. Chevron says Cabrera's number is inflated.
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FOR THE BENEFIT OF the Calif Air REsources Board, there is an area the size of Texas set-aside for oil exploration in virgin Amazon rainforest. Oil exploration means roads. And roads invites ILLEGAL LUMBER OPERATIONS and THAT - THAT MEANS LAND USE CHANGES - real land use changes, directly tied to one fuel - gasoline (okay and diesel) and THIS IS NOT AN EXTRAPOLATION OF ALL LAND USE CHANGES FROM THE 1990's (4% of which was for agricultural conversion). This is ILUC happening now, observable and measurable - now.


We can talk about getting oil from the tar sands in Alberta another day (3 times the GHG production of deep drilling for oil).

. . . has been opened to oil exploration. This is an astounding disaster as Peru has some of the last remaining primary jungle. We're talking about the destruction of an untold number of unique species as well as radical loss of way of life for the indigenous population.

of plants and animals live in the tropical rainforests. we don't even know most of what is there!

Oil exploration, in addition to despoiling a lot of land itself, even worse, is a potent catalyst to further destruction by building roads which opens up the rainforest to illegal logging operations.