The Ethanol Sham, Farm Subsidies, and Environmental Flim Flam

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Submitted by Saij on Thu, 2007-05-17 22:26.

(cross-posted @ Good Tithings and Daily Kos)

Matt Yglesias attended a speech by Gov. Bill Richardson this morning. He emphasized his agreement with Richardson on a basic tenet of any potentially successful environmental plan: Land Use Policy. That is, it’s one thing to talk about reducing emissions, and another to talk about renewable energy. But, it’s all bunk if we don’t talk seriously about reducing the amount people drive. And that isn’t possible unless we talk seriously about enabling people to reduce the amount that they drive by way of better mass-transportation infrastructure.  Most Americans live in urban and suburban areas ripe for good transit.  But, they don’t have it.

Matt said:

At any rate, if you’ve been following this blog you’ll know I’m not really much of an environmentalist in my gut. But when you look at it, whatever’s in your gut, it’d still be really nice for the world not to perish in cataclysmic climate change in the 2060s and that’s going to require dramatic policies.

Well, I am an environmentalist in my gut, and so have even more reason to be inspired by Gov. Richardson’s statements. And I am (not for the first time).

Matt also says that Gov. Richardson made it through the whole debate without mentioning Ethanol. Thank god. Ethanol, a corn derivative, is a sham. It’s a part of the larger problem of government farm subsidies in this country. Ethanol doesn’t burn much cleaner than oil, and it takes up ridiculous amounts of farm land that could be better spent growing worthwhile food products that are actually healthy for Americans.

[I’m convinced one of the reasons that organic food (read: grown the way humans had always grown food before modern industrial farming) is so expensive, is largely because of the farm subsidies that go mostly to commercial and Big farms. Organic farms can’t compete with a government-backed corporate farming industry that eats up all the land and saturates the market with low-quality produce. Our subsidies also have delirious effects on farmers of the third world, namely Africa and Latin America, where the ability to sell their products is the difference between life and starvation.]

Pushing the biofuel angle, without realizing the potential downsides of doing so is short-sighted at best. But, overemphasizing the upsides is just as stupid. Biofuels just aren’t a viable long-term answer. We need electric cars, and more importantly, less cars. Them’s just the facts. And I’m glad to hear that Gov. Bill Richardson understands them.

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how the world works

#3800 On Thu, 2007 05 17 22:41 adam ricketson said,

Andrew Leonard at "How the World Works" (at Salon.com) has been providing a lot of information about the impact of the recent biofuel fad. The jury is still out on biofuel, and we're starting to see the down sides. There is absolutely no reason for Congress to support it.

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It shouldn't have taken more than

#3803 On Thu, 2007 05 17 23:03 John said,

a basic understanding of economics for those "well-meaning" congressmen to realize the market blowback from pushing ethanol. the consequences of such a drastic change in the use of basic staple like corn should have been obvious before they took it upon themselves to pander and score points with an economically illiterate public.

I've been feeling the effects of ethanol for a while in the food business and posted on it several times.

Sadly, for all the buzz in the last year over ethanol, most of the public has NO IDEA about all this.

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The 4th Candidate

#3805 On Thu, 2007 05 17 23:26 Nathaniel said,

Richardson is impressive in many areas - foreign policy, diplomacy, pro-business, taxes - and it's becoming clear to me he's emerging as the "4th candidate" in the race.

If any of the potential Democratic candidates is going to change farm subsidy policies, it's Richardson.

My only real problem is that he initially supported the Iraq War. It's clear that he now believes it was a mistake, but someone with all of his political and international experience should have been strongly against it.

But, he's my favorite at the moment.

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I totally disagree with this post...

#3806 On Fri, 2007 05 18 01:55 ka1igu1a said,

First of all, perhaps a clarification on your part would be in order, but you lost me with the statement ... "Ethanol, a corn derivative, is a sham."

Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is a by-product of sugar fermentation. There's a a whole range of crops that can be the source of sugar. Corn is but one of them.

If you would have qualified your post with "Corn Ethanol," that is, ethyl alcohol produced from the sugar in corn,I would be more sympathetic, but you're making blanket statements about the efficiency of ethanol production based purely on corn.

True, and it has been studied extensively, corn ethanol as a fuel source has a neutral net energy balance and would result in only marginal decrease in CO2 emissions. Plus, using Corn as a primary fuel source for light fleet vehicles in the US would have real negative implications for our general food supply.
Therefore, it makes no sense when it comes to Corn Ethanol.

However, crops like Sugar Cane and Swithgrass have a positive energy balance, overall are much cleaner than burning fossil fuels. The US is suited for growing switchgrass. It would not affect the food supply. With a manhattan-style project, there is little doubt in my mind that light fleet vehicle energy could be be almost entirely running on E85 in 10 years. We're throwing a trillion dollars down the sinkhole in iraq and the Persian Gulf--ultimately which comes down to oil. If the cost of subsidizing a switchgrass ethanol infrastructure is the price to pay to get out of the Persian Gulf, it's worth it, IMHO. Certainly, I reject any notion of "less cars" and more public mass transportation as a solution.

The other part of your post, dealing with organic farming, makes zero sense to me. You don't reject modern industrialization techniques when it comes to the production of any other good and service, why is food production any different? Just like you are going to pay a premium if you want a custom, hand-crafted automobile over an automobile mass produced from the assembly-line, if you want to consume organic food, you are going to pay a premium over food produced from modern processes...farm subsidies or not.

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Corn Ethanol

#3813 On Sat, 2007 05 19 09:58 Saij said,
1.  You're right that I should have clarified the "corn" ethanol distinction.  That's true.  Though I'm still unconvinced of the sugarcane/switchgrass/beet/trash solutions.  Not that they aren't viable short term possibilities.  But, they aren't getting the bulk of the funding, and they aren't likely to--corn is.  And, with the exception of waiste biomass, any crop that we use is going to greatly increase our need for land, water, etc to grow the amount needed to sustain the level of energy needs we have.  And since energy needs continue to grow, then our need for land would increase.  I'm open to using waiste biomass, as it just makes good recycling sense, but I'm not sure it has the capacity to replace oil.
 
2.  We'll have to dissagree about the need for less cars on the road.  
 
3.  As for food, I'm certainly willing to (I do) pay a premium for better quality food.  But, commercial farming in this country is also heavily subsidised in a way that hinders a true competitive atmosphere.  One that could lead to more "organic-esque" farming practices becoming the norm if people in the market place started calling for them--Non-gmo milk products, etc.  Clearly, the food issue was a side issue, but it is impacted by the corn-going-ethanol business. But, it's the subsidies that bother me most. 
 
Again, you were right to point out my mistake in not making the clarification between corn and other types of ethanol, as I was largely writing against the corn variation, but the other variations, while better, still pose similar problems when we scale them to meet the needs of the population.
 
 
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