7. ‘It Was a Mistake’This September, with late-season heat pounding Washington, Zenzi Suhadi cleared security at the Russell SenateOffice Building, preparing to brief Senate aides about the impact that palm-oil development was having onIndonesia’s environment. I asked if he was nervous, and he said no. “These are just people. I don’t have to face anytigers.” He didn’t seem to be joking.Suhadi wanted to tell the lawmakers the same thing he told them in two previous visits to Capitol Hill: that thepalm trade, driven by American investment, is slowly killing his country. “It’s important for you to understand thatall acts of deforestation in Indonesia start with a signature,” he said. “And more than a little of it starts right here.”He was not confident that he would be heard —the last time he visited Washington, lawmakers chewed up theirtime asking him about water buffalo in his village. But still he felt compelled to speak.From Washington, Suhadi traveled to San Francisco to attend a climate march and address a group of hedge-fundinvestors. Just down the street, Michael Bloomberg implored strong immediate action on emissions reductions atthe Global Climate Action Summit, one of the nation’s largest gatherings on climate goals. But the conference waslight on substance when it came to the subject of forests. There was scarcely any mention of peatland at all.PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 10 of 12

peatland.

peat-filled bogs are peatland

he switch to biofuels, the E.P.A. would later calculate, promised to stop therelease of 4.5 billion tons of carbon over three decades, the equivalent of parking every single Americanautomobile for more than seven years. Before the bill passed in December 2007, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it“the shot heard round the world for energy independence

Mos

forests are cut, or new land is opened for farming, substantial new amounts of carbon

Slashing and burning the existing forests to make way for oil-palmcultivation had a perverse effect: It released more carbon

Western nations, led by the United States, began drafting environmental laws thatencouraged the use of vegetable oil in fuels —an ambitious move to reduce carbon dioxide and curb globalwarming.

the oil-palm tree.