In my quest to become Mayor of Mountain View, there seems to be hope for me yet. An American born Indian guy named Bobby Jindal just won the Governor's seat in Louisinia a week or two back. That's a pretty amazing commentary on how far the U.S. has come in the past decades. Just 15 or 20 years ago, David Duke (a leader of the KKK) was in the running for Governor in Louisiana. It was a landslide victory in favor of Bobby Jindal. So, to go from David Duke to a landslide victory for an Indian guy is simply amazing. Jindal has quite an interesting background, including a stint at McKinsey & Co. after he got his Masters degree from Oxford.
Read an interesting article a couple weeks back in the WSJ on how biofuels may actually increase carbon emissions in the medium to long-term. Apprently the shifts in land-use necessary to support the production of bio-materials like soybeans, corn, or palm could in fact release more carbon emissions. The time it takes to get carbon-neutral on some of these projects is pretty crazy - 319 years for soybean biodiesel from Brazil (assuming you're clearing rainforest), 93 years for corn ethanol from the U.S. (assuming you're clearing grasslands), 86 years for palm biodiesel from Indonesia (assuming you're clearing rainforest). I suppose biofuels really aren't meant to reduce carbon emissions, but just crazy that they potentially exacerbate the problem so much.
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