The Big Green Fuel Lie

[GliderGuider]

The Big Green Fuel Lie

The ethanol boom is coming. The twin threats of climate change and energy security are creating an unprecedented thirst for alternative energy with ethanol leading the way.

That process is set to reach a landmark on Thursday when the US President, George Bush, arrives in Brazil to kick-start the creation of an international market for ethanol that could one day rival oil as a global commodity. The expected creation of an "Opec for ethanol" replicating the cartel of major oil producers has spurred frenzied investment in biofuels across the Americas.

But a growing number of economists, scientists and environmentalists are calling for a "time out" and warning that the headlong rush into massive ethanol production is creating more problems than it is solving.

To its advocates, ethanol, which can be made from corn, barley, wheat, sugar cane or beet is a green panacea - a clean-burning, renewable energy source that will see us switch from dwindling oil wells to boundless fields of crops to satisfy our energy needs.

But there is a darker side to this green revolution, which argues for a cautious assessment of how big a role ethanol can play in filling the developed world's fuel tank. The prospect of a sudden surge in demand for ethanol is causing serious concerns even in Brazil.

The ethanol industry has been linked with air and water pollution on an epic scale, along with deforestation in both the Amazon and Atlantic rainforests, as well as the wholesale destruction of Brazil's unique savannah land.

The conditions for a true nightmare scenario are being created not in Brazil, despite its environment concerns, but in the US's own domestic ethanol industry.

While Brazil's tropical climate allows it to source alcohol from its sugar crop, the US has turned to its industrialised corn belt for the raw material to substitute oil. The American economist Lester R Brown, from the Earth Policy Institute, is leading the warning voices: "The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and its two billion poorest people who are simply trying to stay alive is emerging as an epic issue."

The production of biofuels from food sources is inherently unsustainable, and is a crime against humanity and nature. Say no to food-sourced ethanol and biodiesel.

[krispos42]

1. We cannot go to an all-ethanol economy

However, we can use ethanol as a petroleum-fuel diluter and gasoline additive, especially if we use less resource-intensive base products such a organic waste and hemp.

Furthermore the best way in my opinion to export the tremendous wind energy potential of the sparsely-populated midwest is through wind-powered ethanol distillary. Wind power is used to make electricity, which is used instead of natural gas, to distill the ethanol to the required concentrations.

The wind energy currently cannot be readily tapped do to the lack of long-range transmission towers, and it's variable output is a factor as well. However, this energy can be stored in the distillation plant in large battery banks, and the energy generated can power the massive heating coils need to heat and boil off the ethanol.

[hunter]

2. It would be much more effective to raise fuel economy standards...

... and move towards a society that doees not rely so heavily on trucks and automobiles.

Ethanol is bad for the environment and bad for human rights. Industrial scale agriculture of the sort required to produce any significant amount of ethanol is extremely damaging to the earth and its people.

[razzleberry]

3. so agriculture is now bad?

kill those nasty farmers

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Industrial farming -- factory farms

Plans on the drawing board call for a massive re-"engineering" of agriculture to turn a whole lot of cropland into (inedible) corn fields for ethanol production. It will force a food-or-fuel economic "price probability frontier", in economic jargon. The price of food will dramatically increase as the price of fuel continues to rise.

These aren't farmers, by the way, they're agribusinesses like ADM and ConAgra. The farmers are a vanishing breed. Soon you won't even be able to have a flowerpot without being sued for patent violations.

--p!

[razzleberry]

5. the US is not the whole world

not that I see anyone else reaponding
to higher prices, by producing more

[Dogmudgeon]

6. The trend, however, is world-wide

All through history, food has been a cheap commodity. Whenever it has come into competition with a non-food uses for the land, food production has lost. There have been a few exceptions, mainly in planned economies, but they have been few and far between. (And most heavily planned economies become corrupt political satrapies which usually suppress farm output.)

Two major examples have been tobacco and cotton -- not just in America, but in Asia.

And the point I was responding to was your (ironic) remark about farmers being the new bad guys. We have long discussed and debated agriculture here in a number of contexts, but most of us have come to realize that factory farming is a tremendous resource sink that has resulted in major destruction of land, habitat, and culture, all for marginally cheaper food.

The "promise" of ethanol has already led to a land-grab here in the USA that is not being widely reported outside of local farm-belt newspapers. But there you have it -- money talks. And people jump.

--p!

[hunter]

7. Yes. Agriculture is bad. And industrial agriculture is killing farmers.

The biggest wastelands on the planet are lands devoted to genetically modified, herbicide, pesticide, and synthetic fertilizer enhanced monoculture. A mega-corporate managed cornfield in Iowa is a barren desert compared to any natural desert in North America.

The mega-corporate model of farming drives traditional farmers to extinction. The traditional "family farm" in the U.S.A. is in as much danger from mega-corporate agriculture as any indigenous agricultural people in Latin America. The corporate model of agriculture is most profitable when corporate-owned lands are worked by landless wage slaves. In many places the conditions these workers suffer are actual slavery; there is no escape for them until they become crippled and useless as laborers, at which point they die or are dumped off in distant slums to fend for themselves.

Increasing ethanol production will only exacerbate all the horrors of modern agriculture, from the misery of the farm laborers who are treated as disposable commodities, to the destruction of vast areas of natural habitat. The majority of ethanol feedstocks, those in current use and those proposed, are far more hazardous to humans and the environment than most fossil fuels.

Replacing fossil fuels with ethanol makes a bad situation worse. It would make much more sense to substantially decrease our dependence upon transportation fuels of any sort. Our society needs to be restructured so that owning a car is not a necessity for the vast majority of people, and so that the bulk of the long distance transportation of goods is carried on electrified railways, not on trucks.

The romantic notion of the American Farmer is for the most part false, but mega-corporate agriculture is happy to use this romantic image to candy-coat their various crimes against humanity and nature.

[Strelnikov_]

8. 70% of the food value remains following soy biodiesel and corn ethanol

production (assuming wet milling for corn ethanol production).

It is not 'food or fuel', in theory.

In practice, however, it appears what is happening is they build dry mill plants, because its cheap and fast. Use coal, because its cheap. Thus, the market is flooded with DDGS that seems to only be good for livestock (fish?) feed. And ethanol is produced from a fossil fuel that could be used more efficiently more or less directly (CTL w/ EROEI~5 vs corn ethanol w/ EROEI~1).

But, hey, the free market is always right. Right . . .

The above problems, however, can be fixed over time, particularly by implementation of top down controls, such as through a USEA (United States Energy Administration).

So, I see a future for biofuels from corn and soy. As for this source of biofuel being a sustainable substitute for a minor portion of our current go-juice fix is another matter entirely.

[NickB79]

9. "The above problems, however, can be fixed over time"

Unfortunately, we do not have much time left. Possibly a decade, if we're lucky. If we're unlucky, we can only choose between really bad and oh-fuck-we're-dead bad to mitigate the damage.