Burning “biomass”—trees, grasses, and other plant matter—to generate electricity has been considered a “clean” technology in some quarters. Currently, European countries do not count carbon dioxide emitted from biomass burning as part of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This is curious, given that burning biomass does emit carbon dioxide, as well as a small amount of methane. How renewable is biomass burning? Does it leave a “carbon debt” of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
Phaethon’s Fall
The following is my brief adaptation of a much longer piece, a translation of a poem in Ovid’s Metamorphoses by the poet and classicist Ted Hughes. Hughes’s book, Tales from Ovid, is a treasure, BUT since you’re unlikely ever to open it, I’ve taken the liberty of bringing to you, with a debt to Hughes, an allegory that may be even more relevant to our time than it was to Ovid’s. Thus. . .
Phaethon’s Fall
Phaethon importuned his father, Helios, charioteer of the Sun,
To give him the reins of the light-giving chariot
To drive across the sky for a day.
Helios, bound by an ill-considered oath,
With grim reluctance had to yield to the request.
The sky-horses, sensing weakness,
Careened wildly, and, unleashed,
Plunged downward,
Scorching the earth, boiling the seas.
Earth, in agony, cried out
To all-powerful Zeus, who
Struck down rash Phaethon with a thunderbolt.
Phaethon, consumed by flame,
Lived not long enough to regret his error.