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NightflowerFade t1_iucpfiq wrote

Reply to comment by Polymathy1 in Companies’ ‘deforestation-free’ supply chain pledges have barely impacted forest clearance in the Amazon by thebelsnickle1991

Right, but in order to decrease production of palm oil you need to either decrease demand or increase supply of other types of comparable oils. I'm saying that substituting palm oil for any other type of oil will incur a higher human and environmental cost in some way or other.

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Polymathy1 t1_iudqnuz wrote

There are few to no equivalent oils. Pig lard is close, but nobody wants that in their peanut butter...

We could decrease demand by banning it outright. It's unnecessary, and this greenwashing makes people think it's not harmful.

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worotan t1_iucrm3s wrote

No, because other oils aren’t produced in such a rapaciously destructive manner.

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NightflowerFade t1_iucudi0 wrote

That's because the volume of production of other oils is much less. Producing the same volume of oil from other sources will consume up to 20 times the land while depriving the local community of their livelihood.

At the end of the day, I think immediate human outcomes should take priority over future sustainability considerations. Although the cost of environmental destruction should be built into the cost of goods through consumer choice, the sheer efficiency of palm oil production makes it the ideal oil producing crop.

Moreover, rainforests benefit everyone in the world but the opportunity cost of maintaining them (compared to the benefit of clearing the land for economically productive usage) is entirely on the host country. This applies to SEA and Brazil, when Reddit was outraged by the Amazon logging a few years ago. If the rest of the world enjoy the benefits of forests and biodiversity, it only makes sense for governments to pay the host countries part of the lost economic value from clearing forest land.

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