Farmers are destroying pristine rain forests in Indonesia to make breakfast cereals, margarine & shampoo

Tree Palm oil is now the most widely used vegetable oil on the planet, making up 65% of all the vegetable oils traded around the world.  It finds its way into a huge number of products that can be found in the average American grocery store, including shampoo, lipsticks, candles and detergents.  The crazy thing is that it's also found in a ton of different foods, including margarines, biscuits, breads, breakfast cereals, instant noodles, chocolates and ice creams.

In a mad rush to corner the palm oil market, farmers have instituted slash and burn tactics in Indonesia, leveling 2 million hectares of unspoilt forests in a five month period in 2015, alone.

This conquest and destruction of pristine rain forests has come at a significant cost.  The head of the Global Carbon Project at the ‘Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’ (CSIRO) in Australia, Pep Canadell, said the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may have exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in 2 million years.  This is due, in large part, to the 1 billion tonnes of carbon released by the fires in a two-month period.

 The fires are mostly being set by small system farmers looking to monocrop the palm oil and lack of oversight means that you may not know if your products even contain it.  In Australia, for instance, it can be referred to, generically, as vegetable oil.

You can avoid it when possible (and you should).  Production of the oil is expected to double by 2020 to meet growing demand and in countries like China and India but we can make a difference by boycotting products that contain it.