Slamming Bio-Fuelishness

I have been writing for quite some time about the biofuel scam and warning that the growing political demands to convert food into fuel would cause serious problems. It seems others are finally waking up to the facts.

The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for public policy. It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels. These "food-to-fuel" mandates were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis…..

…..It is now abundantly clear that food-to-fuel mandates are leading to increased environmental damage. First, producing ethanol requires huge amounts of energy — most of which comes from coal. Second, the production process creates a number of hazardous byproducts, and some production facilities are reportedly dumping these in local water sources.

Third, food-to-fuel mandates are helping drive up the price of agricultural staples, leading to significant changes in land use with major environmental harm. Here in the United States, farmers are pulling land out of the federal conservation program, threatening fragile habitats. Increased agricultural production also means increased fertilizer use. The National Academy of Sciences reported last month that meeting the congressional food-to-fuel mandate by 2022 would lead to a 10 to 19 percent increase in the size of the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" — an area so polluted by fertilizer runoff that no aquatic life can survive there.

The authors of that piece from the Washington Post, Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis are not rightwing extremists. They are the founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute and a climate specialist and lawyer with the Clean Air Task Force, respectively. They also point out the growing global food crisis and the extremely negative impact of diverting food into fuel. (Ahem, see previous post.)

This nation is diverting something like 20% of the national corn crop into ethanol production. That is projected to rise to around 25% this year. There is a wall looming and we are about to collectively hit it. The myth of ethanol is evaporating rapidly in the harsh reality of the laws of physics. Ethanol is an inefficient energy transfer scheme, not a new source of energy.