"ETHANOL killing Africans.......biofuel creates higher prices and
Starvation"
AFRICA and FAMINE will always be with us. But ethanol won't help
matters there, or in other eternal poverty pockets. POPULATION
CONTROL (and "reduction") is the only answer. But that solution is
hampered by ignorance, poverty, religion, crooked rulers, tribal
enmities, poor land, and lack of natural resources.
-----------------------------
"Ethanol's Failed Promise"
By Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis
Op-Ed
Tuesday, April 22, 2008; A19
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.
Food-to-fuel mandates were created for the right reasons. The hope of
using American-grown crops to fuel our cars seemed like a win-win-win
scenario: Our farmers would enjoy the benefit of crop-price stability.
Our national security would be enhanced by having a new domestic
energy source. Our environment would be protected by a cleaner fuel.
But the likelihood of these outcomes was never seriously tested, and
new evidence has shown that the justifications for these mandates were
inaccurate.
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.
Most troubling, though, is that the higher food prices caused in large
part by food-to-fuel mandates create incentives for global
deforestation, including in the Amazon basin. As Time magazine
reported this month, huge swaths of forest are being cleared for
agricultural development. The result is devastating: We lose an
ecological treasure and critical habitat for endangered species, as
well as the world's largest "carbon sink." And when the forests are
cleared and the land plowed for farming, the carbon that had been
sequestered in the plants and soil is released. Princeton scholar Tim
Searchinger has modeled this impact and reports in Science magazine
that the net impact of the food-to-fuel push will be an increase in
global carbon emissions -- and thus a catalyst for climate change.
Meanwhile, the mandates are not reducing our dependence on foreign
oil. Last year, the United States burned about a quarter of its
national corn supply as fuel -- and this led to only a 1 percent
reduction in the country's oil consumption.
Turning one-fourth of our corn into fuel is affecting global food
prices. U.S. food prices are rising at twice the rate of inflation,
hitting the pocketbooks of lower-income Americans and people living on
fixed incomes. Globally, the United Nations and other relief
organizations are facing gaping shortfalls as the cost of food
outpaces their ability to provide aid for the 800 million people who
lack food security. Deadly food riots have broken out in dozens of
nations in the past few months, most recently in Haiti and Egypt.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick warns of a global food emergency.
The immediate necessary step is a major increase in global food aid.
But beyond that, America must stop contributing to food price
inflation through mandates that force us to use food to feed our cars
instead of to feed people.
Taking these together -- the environmental damage, the human pain of
food price inflation, the failure to reduce our dependence on oil --
it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates
have failed. Congress took a big chance on biofuels that,
unfortunately, has not worked out. Now, in the spirit of progress, let
us learn the appropriate lessons from this setback, and let us act
quickly to mitigate the damage and set upon a new course that holds
greater promise for meeting the challenges ahead.
[Lester Brown is founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute.
Jonathan Lewis is a climate specialist and lawyer with the Clean Air
Task Force.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/21/AR2008042102555.html
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