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The Ethanol Industry's $6 Billion Christmas Gift
Evidence is mounting that corn ethanol and other basic biofuels are actually worse for the environment than the fossil fuels they're supposed to replace.
Who needs $6 billion? I do! Especially during the holiday season when I try to balance my budget and ever-growing Santa wish lists.
I can also tell you who doesn't need $6 billion this year: big oil and gas conglomerates. They just got a little extra via the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). If you can believe it, this tax credit--one of the best examples of wasteful spending out there--was attached to the tax cut deal President Obama negotiated with Republicans.
U.S. taxpayers will initially bear this boondoggle's cost. Ultimately, the poorest people around the world--and our planet itself--will pay the bigger price.
Once thought to be a promising renewable fuel, evidence is mounting that corn ethanol and other basic biofuels are actually worse for the environment than the fossil fuels they're supposed to replace. When you take into consideration the impact on the land and the deforestation that results from biofuel-driven agriculture, you see a rise in greenhouse gases.
And, if the BP oil disaster weren't enough, runoff from the fertilizers used to grow biofuel crops has contributed to the "dead zones" along the Gulf Coast. Hasn't the Gulf suffered enough without another environmental threat?
Industrial biofuels aren't just bad for the earth. Biofuels, including corn ethanol, have contributed to the rollercoaster ride that corn prices have been on over the past few years. This volatility isn't good for anyone--neither for the independent corn-growing farmers in Iowa, nor for the smallholder farmers in Mozambique.
When food prices are too low, farmers can't afford to grow underpriced crops. When food prices are too high, consumers go hungry. The rapid growth of biofuels was a major contributing factor to the 2008 global food crisis that pushed 100 million people into poverty and caused 30 million to go hungry.
Even though prices went down, many are still feeling the impact of that price hike. Perhaps you know someone who will have to fast, not feast, this holiday season because they lost their job and can't afford the grocery bill. In many countries around the world, growing numbers of smallholder farmers won't feast this season because they lost their land to industrial biofuel farms in flagrant land grabs. As a result, they can no longer produce their own food nor afford to buy it.
Headlines in the Financial Times, The New York Times, and other publications point to another food price crisis in 2011. And, experts at the International Food Policy Research Institute warn that food crises could soon begin to occur more frequently without changes in the global food system. This information should compel Congress to question the outrageous federal biofuel targets and re-evaluate the costs and benefits of converting food to fuel.
Instead, our lawmakers have handed the biofuel industry a $6 billion giveaway through the ethanol tax credit. Ethanol advocates claim this money supports job growth, but this subsidy will barely make a dent on our stubbornly high unemployment rate. It may hardly even boost ethanol production.
The $6 billion cost is higher than the savings from President Obama's two-year federal pay freeze. According to the Government Accountability Office, not a penny of this subsidy goes directly to helping farmers. This industry giveaway goes to gasoline refiners who blend corn ethanol into gasoline, but it will trickle down to pad agribusiness profit margins at the expense of America's bottom line.
I have two kids, and my family had to make hard choices during this holiday season. I expect my member of Congress to do the same, and next year choose to use my taxpayer dollars for renewable energy sources that actually protect the planet without putting poor people at risk of hunger.
18 Comments so far
Show AllOne aspect is missing here.
Ethanol is created by consuming more petroleum and natural gas in order to run the tractors, make the fertilizers and pesticides, and run the trucks to haul the crops for processing.
It actually encourages more energy consumption by adding steps to the arrival at the pumps.
Further proof of the depravity of this nation.
The vast majority of U.S. citizens would rather deceive themselves with boondoggles than change their toxic behavior. This is the core of what they think it means to be patriotic. Actually, it is patr-idiotic.
This was in the tax deal? Is there anyone out there still defending the Dems?
It requires about 1700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. Our aquifers are not holding up to existing demands, what happens when the wells start to run dry?
Corn is a highly subsidized crop, so the the $6 billion is in addition to the corporate welfare plunder already being reaped.
and on it continues...
duplicate comment---apologies
Testimony, like we needed it, to the awesome power of Monsanto - and the oiligarchy.
Only one word is needed to explain why this abomination is in the tax bill: IOWA. For clarification read: IOWA 2012.
The big elephant in the room wasn't even discussed. The internal combustion engine. Doesn't matter what fuel you put in it, on the scale of billions worldwide, its destroying the environment.
And that's the problem with most of these types of discussions on alternative fuels or energy sources. Not the technical discussions which are usually pretty fair, but the failure to look at the scale.
We also don't seem to talk much about how everyone, from the energy producer (whether oil company, electric company, etc.) all the way to the individual user of the energy pushes the true cost of the energy onto someone else. All the environmental damage and clean up and the like.
We also for the most part seem to be oblivious to how much energy we waste with modern appliances which are always on - and drawing energy, even when most would consider them turned off. Circuits kept powered and warm for instant on, internal clocks and memories, microprocessors even in the most basic of household appliances. Simple rule of thumb now would be if its plugged in, its drawing some sort of energy regardless of whether its on or off.
The only way forward to a future of environmentally friendly energy usage is to make the current forms of energy much, much more expensive. Nothing else using the world's current monetary systems will actually work. This is why we have people advocating either some sort of free market carbon exchange or an outright carbon tax. Both are designed to make the price of energy higher to spur both conservation and new cleaner sources. The real reason for the fight between the two doesn't have anything to do with fostering a change in energy usage, but instead the fight is over who will monetarily gain from the increased pricing of the energy central to either plan.
Untold amounts of energy is wasted, for sure, but simply increasing the cost of energy leaves the poor cold and in the dark, while the wealthy sip chilled champaign in hot tubs on a well lit mountain side in a snow storm, while the four wheel drive SUV's are parked in a heated garage.
The energy to power transportation can not be grown.
Ethanol is a ruse, a back door subsidy to the oil industry.
I don't have a final solution, just simple suggestions:
walk, bike, live where you work, garden, harness the sun.
No the Gulf hasn't suffered quite enough yet. I watched Jesse Venture' CT show on the BP disaster. Like Katrina, where people heard bombs blowing up the levies, they knew the spill was going to happen. You can actually google it. GS and many others knew it was going to blow. They pulled their stocks 3 weeks in advance. And Haliburtan bought the oil clean up company 3 weeks before too. These things I already knew. But one thing he said was that it was a deliberate act to depopulate the area so that the oil companies could come in and not have to deal with environmentalists. Makes sense. Our government let them spray Corexit all over people, land and waterways. Those people that don't get out are dead. Look how many left New Orleans.
Think for yourselves. Doesn't that make some sense? I buy it. The corporations are just pure evil and I hope SR is right that there will be Karmic blow back big time.
JOE COOL: I hope I'm wrong! But I believe in Universal Justice, and the concept of karma, or as ye reap, ye sow, is a fundament of most spiritual (as well as religious) belief systems.
A friend of mine lives on a sailboat and we're all watching this event. Notice how the news doesn't cover it now which gives many the false illusion that it's all finished. Apart from the existing dead zones under the surface, and the evident devastation to New Orleans, the Florida coast has seen oil wash up. I haven't read about it, for the most part; but this friend told me he's spoken to others who live on the water (or near it) and they've seen oil wash up near Tampa's beaches.
If our leaders cared about human life, they would have made it impossible for off-shore oil drilling to continue after this deadly debacle. Since I can't change the political dynamics, I work what magic I can through literature, and am nearly done with a book that goes into this topic to provide a really HIGH ending. I won't give it away here! It makes me feel good just to write it. Sometimes things I've written HAVE come to pass. I apparently wrote two men into my life, in one case, name and all. (He will be the subject of the next book.)
Ethanol has been the biggest environmental con-job I've ever seen. It is a net energy consumer and only profits the corn growers. What we need is to make gas engines that get 40-50 mpg. Other bio-fules are out there, right? Ethanol emsses up engines and brings down average mpg in most vehicles. How about better bio-diesel engines? How about investing in mass transit? Yeah right, I know that's a pipe-dream in this economy. Corn growers, you may be smiling all the way to the bank but you're ripping off our country and polluting our waterways
Hemp is a versatile crop, but burning any carbon based fuel adds CO2 to the atmosphere.
More proof that science is nowhere a factor in policy-making. It's just pure greed. Science is incidental and irrelevant. This has to change.
P.S.: That's about all I can say on the matter of subsidies to corn-based ethanol without resorting to expletives.
It is sad that this story has gotten few comments, myself included, but I just discovered it. NPR is doing a very good series on this, which I heard part of this morning -- the relation of ethanol to food prices. I'm not a major fan of NPR, but lately they've been doing some really good stories, so I'll give them credit where credit is due. This is a good one and it's really, really important that Americans listen to the problems that these farm subsidies are causing to the food chain. We already know the damage it is causing in other countries due to rising costs, but I think Americans need to know one of the culprits in the rise of food costs here.
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/22/132082743/if-your-meat-prices-rise-you-can-blame-ethanol