Yeah, I know, Stupidity at its finest. Grow your own food and maybe they will get the hint that farmers cannot just rely on Federal money to bail them out of loans cause nobody will buy food from them.
Higher food prices, soaring fuel costs and food riots have all led to "new questions" about ethanol's usefulness, according to one news report.
Well, yes and no.
Good questions are being raised -- but they're hardly new.
Skeptics have long argued that ethanol is more of a political solution than either an energy or environmental one.
Fact is, ethanol makes almost no sense for either energy use or environmental protection.
The politicians love it, though, especially when running in Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. ABC News' John Stossel, for instance, reported that Hillary Clinton voted against ethanol 17 times before becoming an Iowa-bound presidential candidate.
Politicians in both major parties, especially in big farm states, are huge fans of ethanol -- so much that they use your tax money to help produce it.
"If it made a lot of sense," says senior fellow Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, "we wouldn't have to subsidize it or mandate its consumption."
When the U.S. Senate approved a mandate in 2005 that 8 billion gallons of ethanol be in use by 2012, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., warned of its folly.
"I think this is a mistake that will cost the Federal Treasury $2 billion by the time it is fully implemented and could further pollute California's air," she said.
Things are much worse than that. Ethanol accounts for only about 3 percent of fuel today. But with farmers increasingly planting corn for use in ethanol to power cars, critics say world food prices have risen as a result. There have been food riots and shortages in some countries, including tortilla riots in Mexico and pasta protests in Italy.
Corn meal prices have risen 60 percent in Mexico, while flour prices have doubled in Pakistan.
A growing, hungry and politically inept world is mostly to blame, but biofuel programs also have aggravated matters, and have helped drive up prices.
"We're burning food," Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues, told one broadcast network.
Meanwhile, Avery says, we'll need twice as much food by 2050 to feed the 8 or 9 billion people living on the planet.
Yet, corn helps produce only about 50 gallons of gasoline per acre a year -- and U.S. demand is about 134 billion gallons.
For this, we're sacrificing valuable cropland -- a diminishing resource in an increasingly populated world -- and contributing to soil erosion and water shortages.
"It can't add up," Avery says.
United Nations special rapporteur on food, Jean Ziegler, has called the use of arable land to raise crops for fuel "a crime against humanity."
Indeed, 450 pounds of corn can produce 25 gallons of fuel, or can feed a person for a year. Millions of acres of forest have been cleared for this.
At the very least, it's ridiculously ineffective. A University of Minnesota study says the tedious process of planting, harvesting, transporting and processing corn into ethanol -- then the truck-by-truck process of distributing it, since it can't be transported in pipelines before breaking down -- consumes about as much energy as it produces.
In an article last Oct. 30 titled "Biofuels: a tale of special interests and subsidies, The Financial Times' Martin Wolf writes of biofuel programs, "These are farm programs masquerading as answers to energy insecurity and climate change. Not surprisingly, they have the depressing characteristics of such programs: high protection, open-ended support to producers, and indifference to economic rationality."
David Fridley, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs in Berkeley, Calif., says the hope that ethanol can substitute for oil is farfetched: Even if every single acre of U.S. cornfields today was converted to ethanol production, it would supply about 12 percent of our demand for gasoline.
Oil is simply a more efficient source of energy, Fridley says. And it can be drilled for on the other side of the planet and transported here and processed and put in our cars more cheaply than homegrown ethanol.
Ethanol is a bust and a waste. It's only slightly cleaner, but burns up as much energy as it produces while driving food prices higher and leaving only corn producers better off.
For this, we're burning food?
Comments
Yeah, I know, Stupidity at its finest. Grow your own food and maybe they will get the hint that farmers cannot just rely on Federal money to bail them out of loans cause nobody will buy food from them.
Wow the Augusta Chronicle is finally catching up with MR SPECIAL INTEREST Saxby Chambliss. His buds in the corn belt are destroying the GEORGIA chicken business & what does he do, More subsidies for Ethanal. This big spending, big government LIBERAL is destroying the US economy. Think he cares Hell no.
Whatever happened to using Hydrogen as fuel for internal combustion engines? Critics say that the electricity to produce Hydrogen from water costs more than the energy produced. That may be true if you base it on electricity produced during peak hours. Did anyone consider producing Hydrogen only during off peak hours-like during the night. Nuclear power plants and hydroelectric generators are capable of producing plenty of electricity at night, or do they also go to sleep when we do? Iceland doesn't seem to have a problem, but then again, they don't have large corporations and special interest groups running their country.
Pray for our nation and this world....Times are changing and they are not for the better.....ONly God has the answers and you can be sure His plan is the only one that will see light....
Actually, expansion of nuclear power with plug in hybrids is the thing to pursue. And the technology is here now. People have added batteries to existing hybrids and shown they can do complete 40 + miles of daily in town driving on nothing but electricity. And it should be commercially available begining in 2010 So, why do we need our tax dollars subsidizing biofuels and running up food prices?
Ethanol today is only for those who believe in global warming; for those who don't, the path leads to more exploration for oil, including the vast amounts in tar sands. Ethanol may be necessary decades and decades from now when all the oil is gone, but then ethanol should come from cellulose NEVER CORN. deportem: The problem with hydrogen is that enough can not be stored in a car 'gas' tank to get very far. That problem must be solved first. (Perhaps The Chromicle might publish an article on the status of hydrogen tanks for autos?)
More foolish action by our federal government. With the level of misinformation possessed by so many, I don't look for times to improve. Our current three candidates for president sure don't offer much in the way of leadership.
Amen Christian134; God has the answer to this problem and will give that answer to someone looking to Him for it. Seek and you find, knock and the door will open. God isn't pacing the floor or wringing His hands over the fuel crisis but won't interfer with men acting like fools unless He is asked to help. We keep kicking Him out of our institutions and then blame Him for the problems.
Excellent editorial! Producing ethanol to substitute for gasoline is absolute madness for the reasons you discuss. The real root of the problem though is our nation's reliance on the automobile for most of our transportation needs. We have become dependent on a system that cannot be sustained.
Saxby in action::::::::::President Bush's decision in 2002 to sign a farm bill loaded with billions of dollars of new agricultural subsidies triggered considerable criticism from GOP conservatives true to the party's anti-spending philosophy.
Now, as Congress nears final agreement on a new five-year farm bill that will cost nearly $300 billion, the president has taken a harder line. Emboldened by soaring food prices and record farm profits, he has pressed Congress to cut farm subsidies sharply and has made clear that he will veto the popular bill if lawmakers do not meet his demands.
Congressional negotiators hope to take a final, compromise version of the legislation to the floors of the House and Senate this week, then send it to the White House.
In remarks Tuesday, Bush criticized the "massive, bloated farm bill that would do little to solve the problem" of high food prices. "This is the right time to reform our nation's farm policy by reducing unnecessary subsidies," he added.
The same day, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer and his top deputy presented lawmakers with a list of requirements that they said are not negotiable.
Top priorities for the White House http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/03/AR200805...
While I certainly agree that ethanol production is a gross waste of arable land, one thing that people fail to notice is that the US meat industry uses comparable acreage for factory farm grain production in order to feed cattle, in support of the standard American (meat-based) diet. As the meat industry rushes to profit from this misguided American appetite for its product, cattle are forced to eat corn-derived feed - which fattens them quickly and unnaturally - instead of pasture grass which is what they were intended to eat, as ruminants. If Americans would simply scale down meat consumption to an occasional side dish (better yet, adopt an entirely plant-based diet), this vast expanse of land used for factory farm feed production could return to the purpose for which it should be used - to feed people.
God's plan is to leave man alone and see just how far he will go before He steps in and takes over. I have always believed that God has a great sense of humor and therefore he gave man a brain to keep things interesting. >
.. I haven't yet seen where accusing the president of every thing wrong in the world will help anything Even the ones spouting the nonsense has to know it's not true. If you loathe yourself, then pass it alone to someone else (like Bush), you will then feel better about your own shortcomings..
Gee, you'd think from the editorial we eat nothing but corn. Perhaps if we weren't spending so much on the invasion of Iraq, we'd have money to develop other resources.
good comments from eat organic. We get way too much protein in our diets and it is using up our calicum creating bone problems. The meat at Earth Fare is really great and worth the money. If you aren't raising your own at least protect yourself by using Earth Fare. I am not sure what all the deer are eating but that seems to be a resource. You can muscle test the deer meat to make sure it is good for your body. Of course beans and brown rice can replace the meat completely.
If the house and senate had the fortitude to vote for a little drillimg in Anware and the Gulf off Florida it would produce more energy than all the ethanol we could ever produce. The enviromental kooks complain about cell towers, just wait until big wind generators show up in their subdivision. They have no idea how many wind generators it would take to replace one nucular plant.
good post dani.(8:52)
grouse, do you really not see the relationship between removing corn from the market and the food problems world wide? Are you a recent government school graduate?
I can recall in my early years, while watching tv (many years ago) seeing people in poor countries scooping up dirt and picking out grains of rice(?) because of hunger. Things seem to always go full circle.
Patricia, do you really not see the relationship between the policies of this administration and the economic and social problems worldwide?
Yes, grouse, I do. Unlike you, I don't feel this administration is the only problem with everything. Are you a recent government school graduate?
Who says Ethanol is a "bust?" It is a waste, period. I saw a gas station where Ethanol is sold and it is much higher than gasoline, so where's the "savings?? I don't think starving the people in order to make fuel for machines is the way to solve the energy crisis--but it is a way to fatten someone's wallet.
It has taken them thirty years to do it but Brazil's sugarcane ethanol,is a global energy commodity that is fully competitive with motor gasoline and appropriate for replication in many countries. All studies indicated that current corn ethanol technologies are much less petroleum-intensive than gasoline but have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline. Generally lignin based cellulose based ethanol works best because by products can be used as fuel to offset petro consumption in the process. I think it is do-able just do we really want to go this route. I understand Canada sells Hydrogen Generator kits to convert your auto to hydrogen as a fuel, It uses water as a fuel to electrolytically generate hydrogen. Too bad we are not accomodating like Germany and Holland for bicycles. You have a separate traffic light and lanes for bikes and everybody is dinging their bells rather than blowing horns. Help cure a lot of ailments-reduce risks of heart disease and diabetes, reduce obesity, use less resources. The average American is fat, stupid, and a resource hog(water, oil, gas, etc.). I don't know how to sugarcoat it. Statistically 30% of posters are obese with an average I.Q. of 90-99. Individuals in the top 5 percent of the adult IQ distribution (above IQ 125) can essentially train themselves, and few occupations are beyond their reach mentally. Persons of average IQ (between 90 and 110) are not competitive for most professional and executive-level work but are easily trained for the bulk of jobs in the American economy-see your average stupid american. And globally we rule as resource hogs. Hey at least we Americans ain't ugly.
Among money- and power-hungry politicos, greedy special interests and their Gucci-shod lobbyists, self-aggrandizing bureaucrats and a pop culture-preoccupied citizenry, how much of a chance does our experiment in self-government stand?
All that needs to be said is DUH.
OK, Bizarro, I'm happy to report to you that my IQ and my husband's IQ are both over 125. And we aren't fat. Ugly, I'm not certain about.
Great KSL. That ain't William Sidis number (250-300), but then again Sidis died an unknown failure with no significant contributions like the lesser Einstein (160-165). (g)ee!!hee,hee,hee.
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