But my God, does Roger Cohen take his time getting to the point. Before the New York Times op ed writer argues for your elected representatives to allow cheap[er] Brazilian ethanol into the U.S., Cohen attempts to entertain us with a discussion of national "re-branding." He begins with the most elliptical lead I've ever read. "Perhaps there’s something to treadmill wisdom. We’re all so narrow-band these days, using the vast resources of broadband to direct ourselves into a chosen news and ideological tunnel. Polarized pluralism defines us." Translation: Cohen was running on a treadmill (geddit?), watching an unknown news channel (broadband) when he fell into a reverie about his Brazilian exile, when the country's economy was almost as hyper-inflated as his prose. And then he thought, wow! "Energy is the country’s new brand." I'm thinking Brazil needs something a bit sexier, but the point– yes! the point!– is corn ethanol bad; sugar cane ethanol, good. "Sugar cane is not a staple. It’s eight times more productive than corn. It grows year round. It must be processed fast, so CO2-spewing transport to distant ethanol plants is impossible (unlike for corn)." The environmental impact of shipping Brazilian ethanol, pathetic workers' wages and the deforestation be damned. See? That wasn't so hard, was it?
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Lets see: we need high import duties on sugar ethanol to protect domestic corn ethanol. We need to subsidize corn ethanol directly to make it work. Corn ethanol is a case study in green washing. Does this all sound like good energy policy?
And when did we start to care about foreign worker wages? Cripes, you can’t buy anything that is not made in China anymore.
Yes, Cohen is wordy though.
cost of shipping… As if crude oil isn’t shipped long distances in massive quantities to begin with. I don’t see how Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is any worse on this count.
pathetic workers’ wages… As if Brazilian agricultural workers would be earning more if we didn’t buy their products and took our money elsewhere. Again, no cause for celebration, but ethanol is not making anything worse.
deforestation of Brazil… It turns out that Brazilian sugarcane is not much grown in their rain forest regions.
Sorry, Robert, a bit of a strikeout there with your criticisms.
If the US did what Brazil did decades go, set itself to be sufficiently in Energy, specifically oil? The world would probably be awash in oil today with low prices to boot, US wouldn’t need to be in Iraq and the Middle East and Russia would be rather irrelevant today.
So how is it the large a third world country can do this but the most powerful, strongest, richest (insert your own maxim) country cannot even bring itself to contemplate this as it stands at the precipice of an energy doomsday, some 30 years later?
And people call it an empire :)
ra_pro
Good question. I don’t think it’s shortsightedness, I think it’s a difference in pride/culture. I don’t know a time in the US recent history that we’ve prided ourselves on self-sufficiency…it’s always been the standard macroeconomic mantras about improving our living standards through trade. Obviously this is biting us in the butt now, wrt imported oil.
And our attempt at self-sufficiency through corn-based ethanol is a scam. Brazil has a good combination of factors that make sugar cane ethanol production feasible–something that our temperate climate can’t support as well.
ra_pro,
I think it has alot to do with economic leverage. If we buy goods en masse from a particular country, then the U.S. gains a certain amount of political influence in that country. For example, creating a co-dependent economic relationship with the Middle East keeps it from turning away from us geo-politically.
Unfortunately, the U.S. has traditionally had a rocky relationship with Brazil. We do not have strong ethnic ties or any kind of significant military relationship. Bush has made some inroads in terms of climate change, AIDS, and Latin American politics, but Brazil tends to look to Europe instead (perhaps as a result of some infamous immigration).
Before the U.S. commits to leaning on Brazil for our energy needs, perhaps many other things need to happen — i.e, guarantees of dependability, political stability, and increased bi-lateral ties.
NBK-Boston:
cost of shipping…
My bad. I meant the environmental impact of shipping. Rough night. Text amended.
pathetic workers’ wages…
Yes, well, today’s solidarity day– in my mind. And I drink fair trade coffee. LOTS of fair trade coffee.
deforestation of Brazil…
Your link isn’t all that convincing. All it says is that Brazil’s Prez says ethanol production won’t lead to de-rainforestation (like I said, rough night).
Brazil’s soybean-based bio-diesel production gives us some indication of the effects:
“Soybean farms cause some forest clearing directly,” said Dr. Philip Fearnside, a researcher at the Brazilian National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA) and a highly regarded Amazon scholar. “But they have a much greater impact on deforestation by consuming cleared land, savanna, and transitional forests, thereby pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers ever deeper into the forest frontier. Soybean farming also provides a key economic and political impetus for new highways and infrastructure projects, which accelerate deforestation by other actors.”
Go here for the definitive article on the carbon impact of biofuels:
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/116-6/focus-abs.html
This to me is the main point of Cohen’s overlong editorial:
“Some 35 years after the first oil shock, Brazil has moved from dependence on imports to self-sufficiency while the United States still relies on imported oil for more than half its needs. In the same period, Brazil has developed the world’s most advanced ethanol program, based on sugar cane, while the U.S. corn ethanol program is essentially a wasteful folly of dubious carbon offset merits.”
The US hasn’t been smart in dealing with this problem since the 1980s.
“For example, creating a co-dependent economic relationship with the Middle East keeps it from turning away from us geo-politically.”
Gee, I don’t see how that has been go well lately! How many Brazilian terrorist groups are trying to attack the US?
Re detroit1701 :
The days of customers dictating socio-economic conditions to commodity suppliers (oil, food, ethanol, etc. actually passed North America (and I definitely include Canada) by about 20 years ago. Its just taken a while for this fact to catch up to the body politic.
While I suppose these types of demands are well intentioned the fact is that you can not ‘legislate’ prosperity in a foreign country – anymore then ones own.
In the long run they distort markets and actually hurt ours (and theirs) economic interests.
We could be as energy independent as Brazil, but the big advantage Brazil has is not the difference between sugar cane and maize, but the standard in quality of living. If our per capita GDP was hovering around Costa Rica, Panama, and South Africa, we would probably use a lot less fossil fuels, making it much more easier to be self-sufficient.
And even Brazil’s self-sufficiency hides certain facts. Brazil had a head start, but for most of that time, ethanol was heavily subsidized. And even now without subsidies, gasoline has to contain at least 20% ethanol in Brazil. The ethanol revolution in Brazil was not a free market success, and even then depends on a lot of factors that you can’t duplicate in other countries. Kudos for them for weaning themselves off the big oil teat, but you can’t simply copy their methods everywhere and get the same results.
Just got back from a long trip from California, up through Oregon, across Idaho, to Wyoming. Driving from Idaho Falls up to West Yellowstone around the park for several days and back down to Idaho Falls, I averaged 32 mpg on non-ethanol fuel. On my way back to Boise, I made the mistake of stopping at a different gas station in Idaho Falls and got E10 gas. My gas mileage from Idaho Falls to Mt. Home (just east of Boise) was just a hair over 26 mpg. This did include a short side trip into Twin Falls, but still, it was almost entirely highway driving and actually with a slight elevation loss. I realize it’s anecdotal, but it certainly seems to indicate that the use of E10 fuel results in a greater than 10% loss of fuel efficiency for my car. So, I actually use more petrol when you mix it with ethanol than if I were just using it straight. Ain’t ethanol great! (for corn farmers).
Given that the western world is suffering from an obesity crisis, it should be mandatory to turn all sugar cane into ethanol, and ban the use of sugar in food. (After a few weeks without sugar you stop craving it.)
The cry will be, “Stop eating my fuel, fatso!”
Re: 6 mpg loss with E10.
Let’s see. If that were true, then with E85 the loss would be about 8.5 x 6 or 51 mpg.. Your car would run in reverse on E85!
Somebody is making a mistake or making things up.
Perhaps you were driving faster or going up hill. No way can a 10 percent ethanol blend cause an 18.75 percent decline in mileage unless someone poked a hole in your gas tank.
I have been using E10 for over 20 years and never experienced such a loss of mpg in any of my cars or trucks. Even with E85 compared to E10 in my flex fuel Ranger the loss is only in the area of 20 percent.
And lately E85 locally is priced more than 20 percent below E10. So on price per mile it is cheaper.
Itwas a roundtrip with non-oxygenated fuel, and as I pointed out in my first post, I went down in elevation on the portion of the trip using E10. I admit to approximately 30 miles of city driving on the E10 tank (out of 300 total miles), though I also had stops and slow and go driving while in Yellowstone with plenty of up and down driving. I don’t know why the mileage was so much worse with the E10 gas blend, but I am being completely honest about it. I have also experienced this phenomenon to a lesser degree in the past where I would have a 15% increase in mileage while driving on non-oxygenated fuel in Oregon versus the California gas that was in my tank when I started out, and that was seen over a number of cars and 10,000’s of miles over the past several years. I’m not certain, but I believe that Oregon not using oxygenates across the board as well now.