Are Americans Bio-Fools?
Anyone read Time? I have a gift subscription, and while my first choice of reading material these days is predominantly financial, when I saw the cover of the latest issue I felt compelled to pick up the magazine and take a closer look. On the cover, an ear of corn is pictured with leaves that have been replaced by $100 bills. The accompanying headline reads “The Clean Energy Myth.” Time’s Michael Grunwald states at the outset:
The Clean Energy Scam. Hyped as an eco-friendly fuel, ethanol increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices. So why are we subsidizing it?
Ouch! The U.S. farm lobby must be going bananas right now. Grunwald explained the drawbacks of ethanol, whose viability as an alternative fuel is being increasingly questioned:
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable…
But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.
Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions. Grunwald used the example of the Amazon in Brazil. He wrote:
U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon…
…resulting in Paulo Bunyan
Apparently, there is hard science to back up Grunwald’s claims that biofuels are harmful. He wrote:
The environmental cost of this cropland creep is now becoming apparent. One groundbreaking new study in Science concluded that when this deforestation effect is taken into account, corn ethanol and soy biodiesel produce about twice the emissions of gasoline…
“People don’t want to believe renewable fuels could be bad,” says the lead author, Tim Searchinger, a Princeton scholar and former Environmental Defense attorney. “But when you realize we’re tearing down rain forests that store loads of carbon to grow crops that store much less carbon, it becomes obvious.”
Knowing all this, we must return to the question of why we are subsidizing it. The answer? Biofuels are politically-popular. Grunwald wrote:
Members of Congress love biofuels too, not only because so many dream about future Iowa caucuses but also because so few want to offend the farm lobby, the most powerful force behind biofuels on Capitol Hill. Ethanol isn’t about just Iowa or even the Midwest anymore. Plants are under construction in New York, Georgia, Oregon and Texas, and the ethanol boom’s effect on prices has helped lift farm incomes to record levels nationwide.
Someone is paying to support these environmentally questionable industries: you. In December, President Bush signed a bipartisan energy bill that will dramatically increase support to the industry while mandating 36 billion gal. (136 billion L) of biofuel by 2022. This will provide a huge boost to grain markets…
… and, quite possibly, global warming, the destruction of forests, and food prices as well.
Source:
“The Clean Energy Scam”
Michael Grunwald
Time, March 27, 2008
November 15th, 2008 at 9:54 am
while i agree with portions of michaels article,there are several oppossing points overloooked. one is that biofuels are not raising food prices,food processesors & retailers are. as a farmer,i can tell you that if it was’nt for the price increases due to the farmer led investment in biofuels,I many of us left farming would have thrown in the towel,We are already down to 1% of the population.corn @ 7.00 bu. is what is needed for a succesful grain farm, not the 30yr. low of 1.80 /bu. that was the norm in fall 2008,which no one talks about.Corn was 3.50 in 1976.Now in Nov. 2008,corn is 4.25,how does one explain that? I propose to you that whithout the price hikes to farmers,that food would quickley become even more expensive due to the final demise of our ag base,which has been hanging on with low farm prices since the 60’s.What will we do then? Are we going to become dependant on foreign produced food like we are on oil? For all the talk of enviromental damage,do you know what really has a negative carbon balance? A former 100 acre field with 100 houses on it,with the attending yuppy population, who dont’t want to get dirrty and grow there own food,and 200 cars and the pavement and ubiquitous stip mall ,and you get my point.Is biofuels the most effiecient right now? Perhaps not, but at least someone is trying,and its keeping american food producers providing you with food.Does anyone notice that with 3.00 corn, there is only 5.5 cents of corn in a box of cereal,so when it “skyrockets” to 6.00, now its 11 cents? So why does the box price go up to 4.00 from 3.00? People are so disconneceted from their food supply, the answer can’t be discerned.If it wasn’t for the increased crop prices,I would have stopped farming,and if that 40yr. trend continues, then the price changes in food due to biofuels will be insignificant compared to the prices dictated by the food conglomerates when our cuntry relies on food produced in foreign countries.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Thanks for the comment Robert— very insightful.