From the department of “told you so” comes this about-face on what was supposed to be an environmental solution. It seems the cure is worse than the disease:
“CORYDON, Iowa — The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America’s push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.”
“Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country “stronger, cleaner and more secure.”
But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.
As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.”
Dina Cappiello and Matt Apuzzo report for the Associated Press November 12, 2013.
h/t to reader Michael J. Bentley
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Here’s the surprising headline and money quote:
The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.
Farmers planted 15 million more acres of corn last year than before the ethanol boom, and the effects are visible in places like south central Iowa.
The hilly, once-grassy landscape is made up of fragile soil that, unlike the earth in the rest of the state, is poorly suited for corn. Nevertheless, it has yielded to America’s demand for it.
“They’re raping the land,” said Bill Alley, a member of the board of supervisors in Wayne County, which now bears little resemblance to the rolling cow pastures shown in postcards sold at a Corydon pharmacy.
UPDATE: here is the video report from AP (h/t _Jim)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX2f4JnfS74
In related news:
EPA orders cut in ethanol in gasoline next year, citing risk of engine damage
November 15
By Sean Cockerham
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration Friday proposed the first-ever reduction in the amount of ethanol in the gasoline supply, signaling retreat from the Renewable Fuel Standard passed by Congress in 2007.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants 15.21 billion gallons of renewable fuels blended into gasoline and diesel next year, down from 16.55 billion gallons this year. Most of it is corn-based ethanol.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/11/15/4624584/epa-orders-cut-in-ethanol-in-gasoline.html#storylink=cpy
Related articles
- Making corn-based ethanol badly hurting environment: AP (cbsnews.com)
- Ethanol criticized as ‘ecological disaster’ (utsandiego.com)
- Obama’s Green Power … Raping The Land (cryandhowl.com)
- EPA orders cut in ethanol in gasoline next year, citing risk of engine damage (kansascity.com)
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Did this get buried in the NYT, the ‘paper of record’?
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Not only a is ethanol a poor ecological choice, it’s an even worse economic choice.
Ethanol increases emissions, fuel costs, engine damage, & food prices
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/07/ethanol-increases-emissions-fuel-costs.html
Ethanol mandate is raising food prices and hurting the poor
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/ethanol-mandate-is-raising-food-prices.html
Why the US burns 40% of its corn, despite a global food shortage
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-us-burns-40-of-its-corn-despite.html
Why do we burn our food?
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/09/why-do-we-burn-our-food.html
New paper finds misguided biofuel policies provide no benefit to the climate
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-paper-finds-misguided-biofuel.html
This post reminded me of this article from a few years ago. I wonder if it is accurate in today’s terms?
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17166.cfm
Always new corn was a heavy feeder. But I hadn’t considered that the green push could or would head us back to the dustbowl.
Another bill that Congress must have passed before they read it. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again!
Ethanol is a poorer choice than ten years ago, but that is because we are now producing our own energy. Further, more ethanol is now sugar cane based than ever before – import is allowed.
This is a big oil piece…
It was always politics pure and simple.
Didn’t see if a direct link to the AP was made above or not so …
“THE SECRET, DIRTY COST OF OBAMA’S GREEN POWER PUSH”
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-dirty-cost-obamas-green-power-push-0
A series of photos accompanying the story can be found at the above link.
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The USA put so much into ethanol production because of the Ag lobby, the farm vote and especially because of the damn Iowa presidential caucuses which are given inordinate power in selecting presidential nominees.
It would be cheaper in the long run to just buy off (make cash payments directly to!) those ppl … I think I’ll just abandon my old motorized ‘clunker’ autos, boat motors, lawnmowers, generators and weedeaters along the highways in Iowa, JUST before the next caucasus …
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The folks from Google with the time slider on Google Earth have provided a visual history of this issue. Go to these coordinates:
40.733462, -93.269654
Corydon is 3 miles to the NW. Click on the clock icon on the bar above the image and open the “Show historical imagery” application. The slider can take you back a few years. Another field is here:
40.659686, -93.217520
These places appear to have been in a conservation easement program when looked at on images just a few years ago.
Interesting comment in http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Nov/12/tp-report-slams-ethanol-policy/5/?#article-copy . After talking about how a huge amount of conservation land was turned into corn field:
Ah, it’s on a single web page at http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-dirty-cost-obamas-green-power-push-1 See also http://bigstory.ap.org/topic/ethanol
IIRC, it was expected in that 2007 law that ‘switchgrass’ etc. would be used for producing “Cellulosic ethanol” … but that has never materialized.
1) Biofuel makers seek to ease mandates to avert congress
Posted on July 25, 2013 at 8:08 am by Bloomberg in Biofuels
Fair use excerpt:
2) Cellulosic ethanol, once the way of the future, is off to a delayed, boisterous start
Fair use excerpt:
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Anybody that knows anything about agriculture and growing corn knows that article was a very biased one-sided hit piece about ethanol. I am a professional farm manager in Iowa and can assure you that the fast majority of farmers in Iowa are using conservation tillage and other practices to protect the soil on their farms. Farmers aren’t stupid. They don’t want to destroy their factories (land). In any industry you can always find a few examples of abuses and how to do things the wrong way. The people of Corydon are very upset that they were misled and taken out of context by the reporter who wrote this story. Using this article as a way to support negative theories about ethanol is just as inappropriate as the other side using biased temperature data and poor modeling to support their theory of man-made global warming.
Don’t blame just farmers….
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/ethanol-keeps-adm-drunk-tax-dollars
I have searched, studied and evaluated one green scam after another and I haven’t found a single one that provides any benefits to the planet, the biosphere, wild life or people in general.
We have to stop the madness ASAP.
When tens of millions of acres of the most fertile ground in the world goes to growing corn for ethanol rather than food(40% of the total corn crop) it means less acres for all the other crops.
In order to attract the needed acres to generate ample supplies, prices of other crops must go higher. Farmer will plant the crop that makes them the most profit.
Stating that burning ethanol results in less CO2 pollution, has always been the lie about the lie.
1. CO2 is a beneficial gas. Increasing it, increases crop yields/world food production
2. Corn is the biggest polluting crop and uses the most natural resources…….by far
I could add many more points and elaborate but I’ll let Captain Ike Keifer do that, as he destroys every conceivable false notion about bio fuels propagandized/forced on us the last decade.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/digital/pdf/spring_13/Kiefer_Long_Version.pdf
Does anyone know of any scheme devised to prevent global warming, that has not had unintended consequences that were worse than the problem it was trying to prevent? So far I’ve come up with zilch.
I was surprised to see this in the local papers, and pointed it out in Tips & Notes on the 12th.
Steve Keohane says:November 12, 2013 at 5:40 am
Wow! AP article today, ” The Secret, Dirty Cost of the Green-Power Push”. On how ethanol has destroyed a lot of land.
http://www.postbulletin.com/business/the-secret-dirty-cost-of-the-green-power-push/article_02530f8c-4b98-11e3-b72d-0019bb30f31a.html
“Five million acres of land set aside for conservation — more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined — have vanished on Obama’s watch.“
The whole corn/ethanol fiasco was never about the environment.
The green claims were only ever cover for a giant pay-off to the corporate farming industry. It was just a scam put together between powerful and corrupt lobbyists and powerful and corrupt politicians. The taxpayers were screwed and the environment was screwed as a few good old boys shoveled money into their pockets at rates most of us could never imagine.
Maybe the gig is up and maybe it isn’t. Either way the perps will get to keep that mountain of dosh. It’s gone for ever.
The accompanying AP video:
When has burning food ever been a good idea?
“CORYDON, Iowa — The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America’s push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.” “Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.
So the suggestion here is that corn fields in Iowa are an environmental disaster? That farmers in Iowa do not know how to plow and manage fields? And please, families have been burying people in the middle of forty and eighty acre plots in this country for hundreds of years. This is garbage. The reason it was a bad idea is not because farming is environmentally harmful. The reason it is a bad idea is because this takes food, available land, and water and puts it into the gas tank. The world wide effects on the grain prices have caused people to go from poverty to extreme poverty.
Farming is not environmentally harmful. There is nothing wrong with nitrous oxide from crops, carbon dioxide from energy generation and transportation, nothing wrong with the dust from building a fire in winter, and nothing wrong with methane from cows. These unscrupulous scientists will stoop to any low level to frighten people.
Quote:
“Five million acres of land set aside for conservation — more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined — have vanished on Obama’s watch.“
Problem:
The CRP or Conservation Reserve Program was essentially a program where the governments pays farmers not to grow crops on their land. A bit disingenuous for this free market group to support that generally, or scream when farmers can make more actually growing crops and they do so. The CRP was never intended to keep this land out of production in perpetuity.
http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/webapp?area=home&subject=copr&topic=crp