In Bold Play For Energy Independence, Energy Sec. Calls For More Ethanol Imports - AP

[hatrack]

:silly:

DAVOS, Switzerland — U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the U.S. will need more imports of ethanol to meet President Bush's mandate to cut gasoline use.

Speaking to Dow Jones Newswires at the World Economic Forum, Bodman also said he does not see a 51-cent-a-gallon subsidy to U.S. farmers remaining in place beyond 2010 or an import tariff of 54 cents a gallon on ethanol beyond 2008. "The idea is that at some point in the future all these technologies need to stand the test of the free market," Bodman said.

Asked whether he would consider waiving the new ethanol mandate if price pressures made ethanol severely uneconomic, Bodman said it would only be waived if the push toward more ethanol use failed. Bodman's comments follow Bush's State of the Union speech Tuesday night, in which he offered a blueprint he said would lead toward U.S. energy security and independence.

Under the "Twenty In Ten" plan, the U.S. would reduce projected gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years by improving fuel efficiency in cars and light trucks and displacing use of traditional gasoline with renewable and alternative fuels.

EDIT

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4500473.html

[librechik]

1. Yeah. Imports. That'll cut our energy dependence.

Fer gawds sake just put a methanol plant next to every landfill in every urban area and watch the world start to work properly. Ethanol is just another industry wanting big bucks for small favors. Big Corn wants it's share of the corpoarate welfare trough.

[JohnWxy]

13. The 51 cent per gallon excise tax credit goes to the oil refiners who blend the ethanol not to

the farmers who grow the corn from which it is made (along with Dried distillers grain and solubles sold as a feed supplement for cattle - i.e. the protein doesn't leave the food chain only the starch content of corn is used to make ethanol).

If you are bothered by subsidies, how about billions of dollars in subsidies to a mature oil industry. Without the Government picking up many costs for the oil industry we would be paying about 5.00 to $5.50 per gallon. LEt's stop those subsidies.

http://www.iags.org/costofoil.html


"According to the National Defense Council Foundation, the economic penalties of America's oil dependence total $297.2 to $304.9 billion annually. If reflected at the gasoline pump, these “hidden costs” would raise the price of a gallon of gasoline to over $5.28. A fill-up would be over $105."


http://www.iags.org/n1030034.htm

NDCF report: the hidden cost of imported oil

The National Defense Council Foundation (NDCF), an Alexandria, Virginia-based research and educational institution has completed its year-long analysis of the “hidden cost” of imported oil. The NDCF project represents the most comprehensive investigation of the military and economic penalty our undue dependence on imported oil exacts from the U.S. economy. Included in this economic toll are:


Almost $49.1 billion in annual defense outlays to maintain the capability to defend the flow of Persian Gulf Oil – the equivalent of adding $1.17 to the price of a gallon of gasoline;
The loss of 828,400 jobs in the U.S. economy;
The loss of $159.9 billion in GNP annually;
The loss of $13.4 billion in federal and state revenues annually;
Total economic penalties of from $297.2 to $304.9 billion annually.
If reflected at the gasoline pump, these “hidden costs” would raise the price of a gallon of gasoline to over $5.28, a fill-up would be over $105.

(more)

[Warren Stupidity]

2. At what point will we be maintaining our energy gluttony

by depriving the poorer nations of the food they need for their existence?

Davos: the Global Kleptocracy Woodstock.

[poopfuel]

3. Business Week on food vs. fuel

Puts Lester Brown in his place. Also, note what happened to corn subsidies because of ethanol.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_06/b4020093.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Yep, that's independence, all right. nt

[NickB79]

5. South America will become the new Saudi Arabia of ethanol

Too bad all that prime sugarcane land is covered in filthy, overgrown rainforest. Hey, maybe I'll invent an ethanol-powered chainsaw to sell to the Brazilians and make a fortune :sarcasm:

[poopfuel]

6. sugarcane is grown in the Savannah outside the rainforest

Blame other crops, blame cattle.
Do some research

[NickB79]

7. South American savannah isn't an endangered ecosystem?

http://www.greenviews.eu/pub?run=cms&CID=530

"Sugar cane, too, encroaches on the Amazon, but far more so on the Atlantic forest and the Cerrado, a very bio-diverse and unique savannah-type ecosystem. Two-thirds of the Cerrado have already been destroyed or degraded, and the loss of hundreds of species looms. The Brazilian government have declared this ecosystem as being available for agriculture, and sugar cane is threatening the rest of the region. According to Birdlife International, sugar cane provides no habitat at all for birds - and presumably little or none for other wildlife. It is therefore more destructive than many other tropical crops. What is the role of the Cerrado in the carbon cycle and how would carbon emissions be affected if it was completely destroyed? Nobody knows. Even if the planned sugar cane expansion for ethanol was to happen away from the Amazon - there is great concern that it will displace other agricultural activities into the rainforest."

[poopfuel]

9. concern ain't reality and there's plenty of land available without it

Here's Milton Maciel of Brazil, organic farmer.


"Ethanol is NOT reaching the limit in Brazil. There’s so much available land (for example, 41 million hectares – 100 million acres – of partly degraded or unused pasture land, when all the present production of ethanol uses only 2.7 million hectares of sugar cane land) that two ministers of our Government are talking about increasing sugar cane areas 20 fold. Of course they are not ministers of Agriculture, or they wouldn’t say such a foolishness. With present areas under cultivation, Brazil is already a large FOOD exporter and sugar cane ITSELF is its most successful cash crop, the greatest Hit of the moment, permitting production of 27 million tons of sugar and 17.2 billion liters of ethanol in 2005). "

Think your Australian report is mostly fear mongering hype. They probably listened to the plans of those two ministers Maciel mentioned. Look at the amount of greenhouse gases reduced by ethanol use and then tell me how harmful ethanol really is. Sustainable and I repeat, sustainable ethanol can do a lot for Third World countries, as well as here.

http://www.biofuelsnow.com/news6.htm

Again, your original comment was rainforest land is being used for growing sugar. And it's not so.

[NickB79]

10. You must have missed this news article

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x80798

"The amount of land cleared in Brazil's Amazon rainforest rose sharply again in 2003-2004. The Brazilian environment ministry said destruction of the world's largest tropical forest rose to 10,088 square miles in 2003-2004 from 9,496 square miles a year earlier."

Strange that with all that available land, they're still cutting down rainforest. Like my previous post stated, developing existing savannah and farmland pushes new development into undeveloped rainforest. That's the point of the bold print, stating "Even if the planned sugar cane expansion for ethanol was to happen away from the Amazon - there is great concern that it will displace other agricultural activities into the rainforest." If you grow sugarcane on what was once soybean fields or cattle ranches, those operations don't just disappear. They move on to greener pastures, so to speak.

This is an easily tested hypothesis. If there is plenty of available land better suited to put into crop production, deforestation should decrease. If that is simply greenwash by big agricultural companies and the Brazilian government (which has been almost all talk with very little action), deforestation should increase. Surprise, deforestation is increasing.

[poopfuel]

11. your hypothesis is flawed

All agricultural land is not alike. This is too absolute a hypothesis in a world with too many variables. There are too many reasons the Amazon rainforest is being cut down, it can't be linked to one cause.

Deforestation increase does not correspond with more sugar cane production. It suggests bad planning over decades and exploitation, of course. Sugar cane had nothing to do with it, greed did.

But the simple fact is growing more sugar cane in existing lands does not mean pushing development into rainforest. No evidence, nada.

I think you know that. And you must have missed what Maciel had to say about greenhouse gases, etc.

[JohnWxy]

12. Biggest cause of deforestation is commercial logging -

http://www.ru.org/32defore.html

~~
Commercial logging is the major cause of primary rainforest destruction in South East Asia and Africa. Worldwide, it is responsible for the destruction of 5 million ha. a year. Logging roads enable landless people to enter the forest. In Africa, 75% of land being cleared by peasant farmers is land that has been previously logged.

~~
Extensive areas of Brazil and Thailand now provide feed for Europe's cattle, much of it at the expense of the rainforest. In Malaysia, over 3.5 million ha. of forest have been cleared for rubber and oil palm plantations. Worldwide, between 1.2 and 5.5 million ha. of forest are destroyed annually to grow and cure tobacco.


major uses for palm oil:

http://www.newcrops.uq.edu.au/newslett/ncn10214.htm

Oil palm, per hectare, is the highest yielding vegetable oil crop in the world. Producing a number of types of saturated and unsaturated oils, it yields from the mesocarp of the fruitlet, as well as from the kernel. Uses for palm oil are varied and they include the manufacture of cooking oil, margarine, soap and cosmetics as well as various industrial uses.

[NNadir]

14. And agriculture isn't involved at all?

You and I haven't been able to chat for some time since you were cowering behind the blocking function that has been suspended but I am interested to hear whatever blather you wish to assert about what's being done with the clear cut land in the Amazon, after the logging.

A little year ago an anti-ethanol activist protesting the planned destruction of the Pantanal , the world's largest wetland, doused himself with ethanol and set himself afire. He didn't want that Panatal destroyed to grow sugarcane for <em>cars</em>.

I guess he was unaware of your wisdom, import boy.

Bush. Cheney. Ethanol. Bush. Cheney. Ethanol. :rofl:

[jpak]

8. Leave it to Beaver

n/t