Do not expect to read much about this in the NY Times — and definitely don’t expect any follow up questions about his motivation for climate policy ($$$). Former Vice President Al Gore has admitted that his “support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was “not a good policy”, weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.”
Gore was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate mandating the use of ethanol in 1994.
From Reuters:
“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.
“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.
“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”
He continues (admitting more of the obvious):
“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”
However, don’t make the mistake that he has had an epiphany on climate change:
Gore supported so-called second generation technologies which do not compete with food, for example cellulosic technologies which use chemicals or enzymes to extract sugar from fibre for example in wood, waste or grass.
“I do think second and third generation that don’t compete with food prices will play an increasing role, certainly with aviation fuels.”
Gore added did that he did not expect a U.S. clean energy or climate bill for “at least two years” following the mid-term elections which saw Republicans increase their support.
Again, the Democrats had 60 seats in the Senate, which is a filibuster proof majority and Pelosi controlled the House of Representatives with members to spare for most of 2009. They could have passed whatever they wanted. At least two years is translated: maybe in 2012 if Obama is re-elected, the Dems take back the House, and they don’t lose the Senate. In other words, the bill is dead.
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Oh great, now he figures it out, after sticking it to the poorest of the poor across the entire planet, who can barely (and sometimes not) afford just to eat enough to survive. Lord save us from the humanitarians.
The EPA is already pushing 15% ethanol. Of course ethanol damages outboard motors and other engines. So what. It takes a lot of petrol to create ethanol. With grain prices going up, it is becoming a losing situation.
Here’s a clue. The first alternative fuel that is worth doing will be the one that companies fall over themselves to do, WITHOUT SUBSIDY.
No s#!t Sherlock! Tell us something we hadn’t figured out long ago….
Al Gore has NO fondness for farmers he has always had plans to get rid of US farmers.
I walked into the USDA Extension Service office when he was VP one day to hear one of the agents in an absolute rage. He had been to Al Gore’s presentation of Future Farmer Awards and had actually heard Al Gore’s comment to a youngster to get out of farming, there would be no more farming in the USA. That was the day I woke up to the fact that the USA was not the land of the free anymore.
Here is the quote from the Ag Journal, Billings, Montana:
“At a recent ceremony at the White House, Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore let slip what many have long believed was his real intention as regards to U.S. agriculture.
“While presenting a national award to a Colorado FFA member, Gore asked the student what his/her life plans were. Upon hearing that the FFA member wanted to continue on in production agriculture, Gore reportedly replied that the young person should develop other plans because our production agriculture is being shifted out of the U.S. to the Third World.” http://showcase.netins.net/web/sarahb/farm/
And here is one of the bills that is going to fullfill Al Gore’s prophesy – there will be no more freedom to farm in the USA.
“Senate bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.
“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.” ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower…”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2502647/posts
Another view of the bill: http://prof77.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/senate-bill-510-the-food-safety-modernization-act-restricting-small-farmers-to-protect-profits-of-giant-food-companies/
Here is WHY there will be no more farming. The ultimate goal is to make the USA into a huge nature preserve. MAP
Of course you have to get rid of a lot of people to do so but Stalin came up with an easy way
So hes now going to apologise to people who had to pay more for food because of his selfish stupidity.
As usual, my comment will sound childish, but I’ll tell you what – the price of ear corn went from 6 ears for a dollar to 50-75 cents an ear, in about 5 years. That’s when I knew this was a bad policy.
Same with stupid biodiesel. Or hydrogen from water. Just plain silly. These people have done more harm than good. They have allowed people the Pollyanna belief that they can drive cars with no consequences. And, they are jacking up the prices of simple foods, silly, silly, silly.
Thanks Anthony, been enjoying your blog alot lately!
Nice, hundreds of thousands of people,(maybe millions) including myself, screaming about how bad of an idea this was only to be ignored. Now he’s acting as if this policy wasn’t intentionally harmful and was unforeseeable? No, but what it is was…..unforgivable. F’n dirtbag.
You mean, because I needed votes from farmers in an election, the cost of basic food in third world countries doubled?
Darn!
That’s life, let them eat cake!
Nothing liberals have ever come up with is, or ever will be successful.
While he’s admitting it was all about Al then, he’s omitting that it’s all about Al now. His latest epiphany is once again driven by self interest, apparently – check the update to this post for details of how the Goracle is positioned to cash in on his latest advice.
And since the first Tennessee DuPont Tate & Lyle plant formed in 2004 and the second started in 2008, it sure was a fast acting process.
Fat Albert is sure a wizzzzzzzzz! First he figured it was the greatest thing since Betsy Grab-le the Massuese; now that she’s saying all kinds of off-color things about him, he’s changed his script and plans to sell ethanol short and reap a bundle. What a guy! What a World-class guy! Don’t ya’ wish we had a village of them? What a guy!
Most likely this is Gore’s way of announcing he’s divested himself of his ethanol production investments.
Al needs to bone up on cellulosic, algae, etc. None of them are any damn good for a variety of technical, environmental, and economic reasons.
“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”
Just about sums up the entire Climate Change Industry
Gore should have spent more time reading the peer-reviewed literature,
Ethanol Fuels: Energy Balance, Economics, and Environmental Impacts Are Negative
(Natural Resources Research, Volume 12, Number 2, pp. 127-134, June 2003)
– David Pimentel
“In the U.S. ethanol system, considerably more energy, including high-grade fossil fuel, is required to produce ethanol than is available in the energy-ethanol output. Specifically about 29% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy in a gallon of ethanol. Fossil energy powers corn production and the fermentation/distillation processes. Increasing subsidized ethanol production will take more feed from livestock production, and is estimated to currently cost consumers an additional 1 billion per year. Ethanol production increases environmental degradation. Corn production causes more total soil erosion than any other crop. Also, corn production uses more insecticides, herbicides, and nitrogen fertilizers than any other crop. All these factors degrade the agricultural and natural environment and contribute to water pollution and air pollution. Increasing the cost of food and diverting human food resources to the costly inefficient production of ethanol fuel raise major ethical questions. These occur at a time when more than half of the world’s population is malnourished. The ethical priority for corn and other food crops should be for food and feed. Subsidized ethanol produced from U.S. corn is not a renewable energy source.”
Food Versus Biofuels: Environmental and Economic Costs
(Human Ecology, Volume 37, Number 1, pp. 1-12, February 2009)
– David Pimentel et al.
“Growing crops for fuel squanders land, water and energy resources vital for the production of food for human consumption. Using corn for ethanol increases the price of US beef, chicken, pork, eggs, breads, cereals, and milk more than 10% to 30%. In addition, Jacques Diouf, Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, reports that using food grains to produce biofuels is already causing food shortages for the poor of the world.”
Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change
(Science, Volume 319, Number 5867, pp. 1238-1240, February 2008)
– Timothy Searchinger et al.
“Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products.”
You knew it buddy. It’s OK for drinking, as whiskey, not for burning it. You FOOL!
What a waste!….it’s because you just drink Kool-Aid!
So now you wanna make it from cellulose (cotton, etc.) ….DO YOU KNOW that cellulose is made out of CO2?!!!!. You screwed all the way!. Please DO NOT TRY TO THINK, YOU JUST CAN’T.
Per Strandberg says:
November 22, 2010 at 9:47 am
You mean, because I needed votes from farmers in an election, the cost of basic food in third world countries doubled?
Darn!
That’s life, let them eat cake!
______________________________________________________
They (Clinton and Gore) $crewed over the US farmer too. To make sure there was plenty of grain to be used as an economic weapon against third world farmers, Dan Amstutz, VP of the grain trader Cargill, wrote the “Freedom to Farm Act” of 1996. It was later dubbed the “freedom to FAIL act” Then came the Grain to bio-fuel fiasco. Is any one surprised that both Monsanto AND Cargill posted record earning in 2008 while the rest of the economy was in a recession?
Freedom to Fail: http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2000/00july-aug/lilliston.html
“…according to Sheila Ehrich, a farmer from Elmore, Minnesota, it is the large grain buyers who have reaped the benefits of Freedom to Farm, not farmers themselves. “Cargill is buying corn damn cheap –”
Freedom to Farm’s lower commodity prices have not translated into consumer benefits. Since 1984, the real price of a USDA market basket of food has increased 2.8 percent while the farm value of that food has fallen by 35.7 percent, according to C. Robert Taylor, professor of agriculture and public policy at Auburn University. Taylor says there is a “widening gap” between retail price and farm value for numerous components of the market basket, including meat products, poultry, eggs, dairy products, cereal and bakery products, fresh fruit and vegetables, and processed fruit and vegetables…
The story of the selfless Al Gore.
What Poptech said. And for all biofuels.
Study from 2005: David Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76) “Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower”
“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”
Why is it that modern politicians are absolute suckers for a vested interest… except that of the taxpayer?
If people want to use corn as a biofuel, then they should burn it for heat in a corn stove. They can get about 7,000 btu’s per pound of corn kernels at an efficiency of 70-85 percent. I’m not saying this is a good way to go. It is just a much better use of corn than ethanol. And no subsidies are required.
*sigh*
Isn’t this what the alternative-energy skeptics have been saying for years about corn-based ethanol? Don’t answer…it was a rhetorical question.
Al Gore: dumb as a sack of hammers (with apologies to hammers).
Please forgive my childish name-calling, but these sorts of stories really grind my gears. Gore is acting as if his sudden epiphany should be news to everybody. But, for him to act as if the consequences of his policies were not foreseeable is simply — gobsmacking.