In an excellent E85 editorial we published two years ago, Michael Karesh pointed out that U.S. corn growers would need a landmass nearly the size of Texas to make a significant dent in American gas consumption. And now a lot of the existing corn-growing land is under water. Ethanol opponents reckon the recent flooding will mean that even more of the current corn crop will be devoted to E85 production– driving-up food prices even further, faster. They want the feds to suspend its ethanol "mandate" (i.e. .51 per gallon subsidy, tariffs on imported ethanol, price supports, CAFE credits, etc.). That little piece of business currently stands at a directive for 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2015, and 21 billion gallons by 2022. The ethanol industry says HELL NO. Instead, they want the feds to release protected land for their profit patriotic efforts. According to The Detroit News, "Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa… and other farm state members of Congress argue that the Agriculture Department should allow more planting in 35 million acres of conservation land as a way to help ease the price increases." It just gets worse.
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Hey, where are the democrats complaining about “Big Corn”? These fields are not producing. Where are the investigations?
I love the cognitive dissonance on the left. On one hand, if we lease out new lands today, it won’t affect supply for over a decade. On the other hand, “Big Oil” is purposely not producing on many of their existing leases. Of course, we aren’t going to let them use the excuse that we use to forbid more exploration to explain why they haven’t instantly started producing on every lease they have bought.
As if the whole thing made sense to begin with. We shouldn’t allow drilling today because it won’t make a difference for years? Didn’t we tell you to start allowing drilling years ago?
And besides, do you not put money in your retirement account because it won’t benefit you for years? Seriously?
IDIOTS!
I’m complaining about Big Corn, and I’m leftist.
You get the same cognitive dissonance on the right (Freedom, democracy, American way, yadda, yadda; now what was it about Habeus Corpus or Extraordinary Rendition, again?). Politicians–successful ones–follow the money, regardless of their stripe.
Alternative fuels, in general, are a boondoggle.
In oil’s case, the issue is that we’d be drilling and extracting to address a pricing problem that a) has more to do with speculation than supply/demand, b) wouldn’t necessarily fix the issue as the amounts in places like ANWR aren’t that large and c) divert attention from the fact that we’d just be unlocking more carbon anyways.
What oil wants is to maintain the status quo. Price controls, forced shifts to other methods: that’s bad. Oil is an old and conservative industry and change is bad.
Big Agro’s boondoggle is that they’re selling snake oil, plain and simple. The kind of ethanol production that benefits ADM or Monsanto isn’t even energy-positive, and it’s certainly not good for farmers (it just results in Big Agro getting their talons into you further) and it’s not good for consumers (food prices increase, crop diversity decreases).
Yes, there’s switchgrass and/or waste-based biodiesel/propane/alcohol, but that’s not going to make Big Agro money.
Then you get Hydrogen, which is great, except that you have to somehow make, store and transport it. That’s a problem.
I agree the a carbon-neutral fuel is a good thing, but the emphasis should be on how we can go about using less energy, not how we can play a shell game and maintain our current consumption levels. The best case task is to reduce demand, not the screw around with supply.
Instead of selling out to a supplier, I’d rather see this money dumped into R&D for more efficient power generation and usage, or tax credits/loans/grants for people/organizations to enable them to reduce their use.
The new reality is that with more and more biofuel in autos, fuel prices are becoming dependent on the weather.
(in addition to such vagaries as strikes in Nigeria or hiccuping dictators in Venezuela).
There should be a world market in biofuels.
When corn ethanol in the US is under water, we should be able to import it from Brazil.
I say let’s plant corn in Alaska’s ANWR!
psar,
The dissonance is not really in the approach to big corn (except in this weird land case), it’s in the application of the facts with oil. How can you use the fact that it can take many years to develop a field to support one side of your argument, while completely ignoring that same fact when you attack the oil companies?
That was my point.
It seems that with the whole Habeas Corpus thing the law and order right folks aren’t that big on it for citizens either. The small government and libertarian right are the only ones who have a possible contradiction here, and they are a minority of the party. Many of us are independents. Still, the Supremes blew it on their decision. Not by the verdict, but by the writing of the decision itself not being clear at all. Had they simply said that Gitmo is de facto US territory, the terrorists are not soldiers, and the present situation is not kosher, then we would all be better off.
Both sides have serious contradictions when it comes to how we treat folks outside our borders.
Efficiency is always desirable. No one will argue with that. However, how much of the talk is really about efficiency when we hear about “saving”. Usually, it’s about how OTHER people are wasting it doing things I don’t value, like driving an SUV. The best bet for improved efficiency is NOT mandates or government funding hand picked industries. You can tax energy to raise the price and influence the market to be more efficient, but what taxes would you give up?
The left won’t give up any of them. None. They want their social engineering and their eco saving, too. The right won’t simply let them have the new tax AND the old tax because they fear it would destroy the economy and lead to a socialist state (even the big brother right fear this).
The problem is not technology, oil, or even Saudi’s. The problem is us.
Yes lets release 35 million acres of “conservation land” for planting corn that positively will not produce as much energy as releasing 20,000 acres of ANWR to oil driling (no matter how conservative your estimate is for the amount of oil in ANWR). Lets not drill for oil in the gulf; oh no, we’ll leave that to countries with great environmental records like Cuba and Mexico. Two years ago I thought that American citizens would wake up and demand development of our own known oil reserves as well as exploration for additional oil reserves with rising gas prices. It looks like I over estimated the people of this country.
“I say let’s plant corn in Alaska’s ANWR!”
Somewhere, a green giant is smiling…
On a more serious note, it must be said that the drop in the dollar resulting from years of budget deficits (fueled by tax cuts) is a de-facto tax increase. The difference it that the revenue is flowing out of the US rather than to the Federal government. But, hey, it’s better than raising taxes, right?
Corn in an ANWR.
Damn, that’s funny. You get my vote for “Quote of the Week”.
Actually, I’m pretty sure that the recently passed farm bill lowers the subsidy to 45 cents, from the previous 51 cents per gallon of ethanol produced. I also believe it lowered the mandated ethanol production outputs to those listed in the article summary. While it’s a small step, it’s at least a sign that Congress is getting a little scared of the public backlash.
There’s no question that Big Corn still has a lot of pull, as evidenced by the proposal to farm 35 million acres of sensitive land that’s in conservation easements right now. It’s an awful idea, only put on the table because of Big Corn’s muscle. They have far more sway than any other ag lobbying group; just go ask the Cattlemen.
And if anyone is curious about how much ethanol is actually affecting the price of food, here’s a short write-up by an ag policy newsletter:
While ethanol supporters and opponents contract for competing studies on the impact of the fuel on food, the one primarily used by the U.S. Congress could have influence. The Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) is a consortium between Iowa State University and the University of Missouri and it is the policy research institution for the agriculture committee on Capitol Hill. In analysis released this week, FAPRI says that biofuel policy will increase corn prices by 16 percent and food costs by 0.5 percent above the level they would be without a federal biofuel policy. That would have consumer food costs running 20 percent higher than the average of the past 10 years. This is below the estimate produced earlier by Iowa State , but above the estimate by USDA. FAPRI is not usually influenced by politics which means that its estimate would be factored into future policy analysis that it provides to the Congress.
If you don’t think Big Oil also needs lots of land, look at Valdez, Alaska. Look at any coastline after an oil spill. Empty hotels, docked fishing boats, lost communities.
Not to mention, the loss of marshland, loss of protection again floods, destruction of habitat for canals and oil transfer facilities.
If ethanol is made form celluose disgards, there is little loss of farmland or forestland.
Hopefully ethanol will end up with nearly 100% percent of the corn crop. How?
Cut out high fructose corn syrup used mostly in soft drinks. It is a health disaster.
Cut out hog factories. They are an environmental disaster.
Cut out chicken factories. They are an animal rights disaster. Not that animal rights are my bag.
Cut out exports. They are a waste of energy, as are hog and chicken factories by the way.
Although ethanol will only amount to about 10% of liquid fuel for transport at its peak, that is still 10 percent of cars that otherwise would be parked due to Peak Oil.
If the TTAC cares about cars, it should support ethanol not knock it.
If land taken from the conservation program for ethanol has been in the program for >15 years, so much sequestered carbon will be released, according to an article in Science magazine last Feb that it will take at least 48 years of growing ethanol to repay the carbon debt. And according to experts in the matter, we need to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next 10-20 years. Thus, taking land from the conservation program to grow ethanol is a lose-lose for the planet. See my article on the carbon impact of biofuels from the June Env’tal Health Perspectives, published by the National Institute of Env’tal Health Sciences: http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/116-6/focus-abs.html
97escort
Great thing to burn up alllll the food.
What do you eat?
The USA produces over half the worlds corn crop and is using 30% to replace maybe 5% of the gasoline. Then if you figure a huge amount of hydrocarbons are used to produce that ethanol and most vehicles lose more than 5% of mileage when burning E10 you using way more hydrocarbons to produce ethanol than you could ever realize in savings.
Brought to you by the taxpayers dollars.
Stock up on beef now. the price will skyrocket after the current glut due to the farmers dumping the cows they cannot afford to feed. Of course that will make escort happy since he thinks the rest of us shouldn’t eat beef.
Have some friends in town from England. They are paying 12 dollars a gallon for gasoline. They have an even more ‘Evil Big Oil’ in England, apparently.
Carlos,
I call bullshit.
You can yell about PES all you want. The truth is that agriculture has done more to harm the environment than oil can ever hope to accomplish. Get over it. Besides, it seems agricultural had it’s own hand in PES, whose product is it that got the captain drunk after all? I am pretty sure that he wasn’t drinking fermented petroleum.
I’m with psarhjinian: corn ethanol is a breathtaking, bi-partisan boondoggle. Within the Republican Party it is the kleptocratic, corporate-welfare wing that has been the most behind corn ethanol (cheered on by the Commander in Chimp). Within the Democratic Party, it is the populist, agri-sentimentalist wing that has pushed it (including, unfortunately, Barack Obama). But, more than anything, support for corn ethanol is aligned more along regional than party lines. Thank our founding fathers for giving Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota and South Dakota as many senate votes as California, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas.
I assume 97Escort’s comment was tongue-in-cheek. Otherwise he (or she) clearly has no concept of the effect that biofuel policies have had on commodity prices, and therefore the cost of food among the poorest of the poor in Africa, Latin America and Asia. (Africans eat semi-processed corn meal, not highly processed corn flakes.)
In any case, it all comes down to the subsidies and mandates. Without those, we wouldn’t even be having this debate. But don’t expect sanity to set in any time soon. For politicians like Charles Grassley, it is easier to ask for more favors for corn ethanol than to stop the policies that created the mess in the first place.