US politicians and bureaucrats have less compassion and common sense than an average Londoner
Guest essay by Paul Driessen
“You’ve heard of Live Aid? Well, this is Drive Aid,” an ardent young man says, as he approaches London pedestrians. “Greedy people in developing nations are eating huge amounts of food that could easily be turned into biofuel to power our cars. African acreage the size of Belgium is being used for food, and we’re saying it should go to cars here in the UK. Can we have your support?”
Londoners reacted with disbelief and outrage, the ActionAid UK video shows, and refused to sign his mock petition. The amusing stunt drove home a vital point: Biofuel programs are turning food into fuel, converting cropland into fuel production sites, and disrupting food supplies for hungry people worldwide. The misguided programs are having serious environmental consequences, as well.
Why, then, can’t politicians, bureaucrats and environmentalists display the common sense exhibited by London’s citizenry? Why did President Obama tell Africans (many of whom are malnourished) in July 2009 that they should refrain from using “dirty” fossil fuels and use their “bountiful” biofuel and other renewable energy resources, instead? When will Congress pull the plug on Renewable Fuel Standards?
Ethanol and other biofuels might have made some sense when Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and established mandates (or “standards”) requiring that refiners and consumer purchase large quantities of ethanol and other biofuels. Back then, despite growing evidence to the contrary, many people thought we were running out of oil and gas, and believed manmade global warming threatened the planet. But this is not 2005. Those rationales are no longer persuasive.
The hydraulic fracturing revolution has obliterated the Club of Rome “peak oil” notion that we are rapidly exhausting the world’s petroleum. Climategate and other IPCC scandals demonstrated that the “science” behind climate cataclysm claims is conjectural, manipulated and even fraudulent. And actual observations of temperatures, storms, droughts, sea levels and Arctic ice have refused to cooperate with computer models and Hansen-Gore-EPA-IPCC disaster scenarios.
In fact, biofuels and Renewable Fuel Standards cannot be justified on any grounds.
The United States is using 40 million acres of cropland (Iowa plus New Jersey) and 45% of its corn crop to produce 14 billion gallons of ethanol annually. This amount of corn could feed some 570 million people, out of the 1.2 billion who still struggle to survive on $1.25 per day.
This corn-centric agriculture is displacing wheat and other crops, dramatically increasing grain and food prices, and keeping land under cultivation that would otherwise be returned to wildlife habitat. It requires millions of pounds of insecticides, billions of pounds of fertilizer, vast amounts of petroleum-based energy, and billions of gallons of water – to produce a fuel that gets one-third less mileage per gallon than gasoline and achieves no overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Ethanol mandates have caused US corn prices to rocket from $1.96 per average bushel in 2005 to as much as $7.50 in autumn 2012 and $6.68 in June 2013. Corn growers and ethanol makers get rich. However, soaring corn prices mean beef, pork, poultry, egg and fish producers pay more for corn-based feed; grocery manufacturers pay more for corn, meat, fish and corn syrup; families pay more for everything on their dinner table; and starving Africans go hungry because aid agencies cannot buy as much food.
By 2022, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (amending the 2005 law) requires 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol and 21 billion gallons of cellulosic and other non-corn-based biofuels. That will monumentally worsen all these problems.
Equally insane, the Environmental Protection Agency’s draft rule for 2013 required that refiners purchase 14 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels. There’s a teensy problem: the fuel doesn’t exist. A mere 4,900 gallons were produced in March, and zero the other months. So companies are forced to buy fantasy fuel, fined big bucks if they do not, and punished if they get conned into buying fraudulent “renewable fuel credits” from “socially responsible” companies like Clean Green Fuel, Absolute Fuels and Green Diesel.
Ethanol collects water, which can result in engine stalls. It corrodes plastic, rubber and soft metal parts. Pre-2001 car engines, parts and systems may not be able to handle E15 fuel blends (15% ethanol, 85% gasoline), adversely affecting engine, fuel pump and sensor durability. Older cars, motorcycles and boats fueled with E15 could conk out in dangerously inopportune places; at the very least they could require costly engine repairs. Lawn mowers and other gasoline-powered equipment are equally susceptible.
On a global scale, the biofuels frenzy is diverting millions of acres of farmland from food crops, converting millions of acres of rainforest and other wildlife habitat into farmland, and employing billions of gallons of water, to produce corn, jatropha, palm oil and other crops for use in producing politically correct biodiesel and other biofuels.
To top off this seemingly inexhaustible list of policy idiocies, all this ethanol and other biofuel could easily be replaced with newly abundant oil and gas supplies. Amazing new seismic, deepwater, deep drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other technologies have led to discoveries of huge new reserves of oil and natural gas – and enabled companies to extract far more petroleum from reservoirs once thought to have been depleted.
That means we can now get vastly more energy from far less land; with far fewer impacts on environmental quality, biodiversity and endangered species; and with none of the nasty effects on food supplies, food prices and world hunger that biofuel lunacy entails.
We could do that – if radical greens in the Obama Administration, United Nations and eco pressure groups would end their ideological opposition to leasing, drilling, fracking, Outer Continental Shelf and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge development, Canadian oil sands, the Keystone pipeline and countless other projects. We could do so, if they would stop behaving like environmentalist Bull Connors, arrogantly blocking the doors to human and civil rights progress.
This colossal global biofuels industry exists only because resource depletion and climate Armageddon ideologies do not die easily – and because politicians lavish government mandates and billions of dollars in taxpayer and consumer subsidies on firms that have persuasive lobbyists and reliable track records for channeling millions of those dollars back to the politicians who keep the racket going.
The ActionAid UK video has lent some good British gallows humor to a serious issue. As another well-known Brit might say, it is time rein in a global SPECTRE that has wreaked too much human and environmental havoc.
To get that long overdue effort underway, Congress needs to amend the 2005 Energy Policy Act, eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standards and end the taxpayer subsidies.
A few thousand farmers and ethanol makers will undoubtedly feel some pain. A few hundred politicians will have less money in their reelection coffers. However, countless wild creatures will breathe much easier in their newly safe natural habitats – and millions of families will enjoy a new birth of freedom, a new wave of economic opportunity, and welcome relief from hunger and malnutrition.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Could not agree more. Biofuel production is a criminal waste of food for the profit of a few.
Palm oil plantations have a constant battle with the surrounding rainforest trying to take back what is theirs. This takes lots of fuel and weedkiller to do.
Palm oil for any use is not environmental.
It appears any practice that is called ‘green’ or that is somehow associated with the ‘war’ (the first casualty in ‘war’ is the truth) to fight climate ‘change’ turns off all reason and logic. Ecological and economic damage for no significant reduction in CO2 emissions which are not a problem anyway is completely acceptable…. …..It does not matter to the climate fanatics that converting corn to ethanol results in increased CO2 emissions (if all energy inputs are included, including fertilizer, and current efficiency of distillation processes, it possible with state of the art vacuum distillation to reach parity or slightly better however due to the significantly higher capital costs for vacuum distillation fossil fuel and higher costs for electricity than natural gas, natural gas is typically burned for the necessary triple distillation.) … ….It also does not matter to the climate fanatics that the US are using some of the most fertile land on the planet (12 feet of topsoil as the top soil has been deposited ironically by the 22 glacial/interglacial cycles) to grow food to convert to ethanol…. ….It does not matter to climate fanatics that as there is limited agricultural land on the planet that virgin forest is being cut down to grow more to convert to biofuel. The EU mandated 20% biofuel would require all available EU agricultural land, as that is not practical they happily cut down virgin forest. … ….It does not matter that cutting down/burning down virgin rainforest forest in Indonesia will result in leached soil that cannot grow anything in 10 to 20 years. See Brazil also where the practice is to raise cattle where rainforest once grew…. ….It does not matter that as there is a lag in cutting down virgin forest to grow food to convert to biofuel that the cost of food increases which has resulted in food riots in third world countries.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/slyutse/as_i_discussed_here_last.html
EPA’s RFS accounting shows corn ethanol today is worse than gasoline
http://plevin.berkeley.edu/docs/Plevin-Comments-on-final-RFS2-v7.pdf
http://www.senseandsustainability.net/2012/01/26/scrapping-corn-ethanol-subsidies-for-a-smarter-biofuels-policy/
From its first appearance in 1978 to this past December 31st, the policy provided over $20 billion in subsidies to American ethanol producers, costing the U.S. taxpayer almost $6 billion in 2011 alone. Enacted in the spirit of “energy independence,” ethanol subsidies became a redoubt for the agricultural lobby and a lighting rod for criticism from environmentalists and sustainability advocates To add to the environmental cost of U.S. corn ethanol is the potential of its expanded production to raise global food prices, potentially increasing the likelihood of social unrest and instability worldwide. Some 40 percent of the American corn crop is now distilled into fuel, and The Economist has estimated that if that amount of corn were used as food instead, global food supplies of corn would grow by 14 percent. Both the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization have noted the positive link between U.S. corn ethanol production and rising corn prices. Because of America’s position as the leading corn producer and the status of Chicago-traded corn prices as a benchmark for global ones, the U.S. can have an outsize impact on worldwide food prices. Indeed, corn prices have more than tripled in the last ten years, in no small part due to the ethanol boom.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
The Clean Energy Scam
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/313699/news/world/singapore-demands-action-from-indonesia-on-haze
The illegal burning of forest on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, to the west of Singapore, to clear land for palm oil plantations is a chronic problem, particularly during the June to September dry season.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22998592
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/palm-oil
Biodiesel fuelling palm oil expansion
Commitments from various governments to increase the amount of biofuels being sold are pushing this rise in demand, because they’re seen as an attractive quick fix to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By 2020, 10 per cent of fuel sold in the EU will be biofuel and China expects 15 per cent of its fuel to be grown in fields, while India wants 20 per cent of its diesel to be biodiesel by 2012. The irony is that these attempts to reduce the impact of climate change could actually make things worse – clearing forests and draining and burning peatlands to grow palm oil will release more carbon emissions than burning fossil fuels.
But this phenomenal growth of the palm oil industry spells disaster for local communities, biodiversity, and climate change as palm plantations encroach further and further into forested areas. This is happening across South East Asia, but the problem is particularly acute in Indonesia which has been named in the 2008 Guinness Book of Records as the country with fastest rate of deforestation. The country is also the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, largely due to deforestation.
Much of the current and predicted expansion oil palm expansion in Indonesia is taking place on forested peatlands. Peat locks up huge amounts of carbon, so clearing peatlands by draining and burning them releases huge greenhouse gases. Indonesia’s peatlands, cover less than 0.1 per cent of the Earth’s surface, but are already responsible for 4 per cent of global emissions every year. No less than ten million of Indonesia’s 22.5 million hectares of peatland have already been deforested and drained
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-14/biofuel-production-a-crime-against-humanity/2403402
John Marshall, the fuel they use is the fuel they make from Palm Oil????????????????? Weeds they cut and compost, Under the canopy weeds are not a problem. Use far less fertilser than western farmers. Your real beef is???????????????????
Dont forget, as I write this the people running the extates are choking me and millions of others to death. Facts count.
Obama will double or triple down tomorrow. Unlike the DDT ban which is slowly, slowly fading away after only killing a few million Africans, the bio and anti-carbon folks are likely here to stay for the balance of you lifetime. Just too much money and too many big players in the game.
David says:
June 23, 2013 at 7:24 pm
“Fracking is being used by the Globalists.to poison land in order to snatch it up at low prices.”
Ok, back it up. Show price data; show evidence that “the land is poisoned”.
They’ve been fracking in the Lüneburger Heide here in Lower Saxony since the 60ies. Even the German Greens have never claimed or found evidence for such poisoning.
You didn’t know it’s old technology? The only part that is new is computer controlled horizontal drilling. You talked about something you don’t know anything about it? Well, why not read a little about it first.
Which chemicals in particular? About 97% of fracking fluid consists of water and quartz sand. Those are in fact the active ingredients – water to fracture the rock – and sand to prop open the cracks which have been opened. The rest typically consists of additives to keep the sand in suspension, make it easily pumpable etc. Typical additives include
1. A bactericide to prevent bacterial action underground causing corrosion of the well casing.
2. A gel (often guar gum) to thicken the fracking fluid and keep the sand in suspension.
3. A cross-linker (borate) to maintain the viscosity of the gel
4. A clay stabiliser to prevent clay minerals from clogging the well.
5. A gel breaker to prevent the gel from coagulating.
6. pH buffers to keep everything at the required pH.
7. A surfactant (detergent) to increase the slipperiness of the fracking fluid for ease of pumping.
A variety of different additives could be used to do these jobs. The exact composition is a commercial secret. But there is no real need to resort to toxic chemicals as all these things can be done with non-toxic additives. Indeed you can do it all with a combination of food additives and common household cleaning materials.
The most toxic chemicals involved are the ones already in the ground; the fracking fluid is pumped into oil bearing rock. I suppose fracking does help these “poisons” to move. That is the point. But when they move they don’t enter “the environment” – they get extracted.
Remember that all this happens very deep down in the rocks where the petrochemicals come from – far away from the surface and the green living stuff – and well below ground water level. That deep down things generally tend to stay put. There is oil down there which hasn’t moved for millions of years (ergo fracking). The only way the fracking fluid has of getting out of that trap is generally by coming back up the well with the oil and gas – which is usually what happens.
As to the toxic chemicals leaching into water supplies – got an example? I have yet to see a real one. All I have seen are scare stories which misrepresent the gas which commonly escapes naturally in areas above gas and oil deposits as something new and dangerous. In many of these places gas and even oil have been bubbling naturally to the surface for millenia. If you think that is a problem the only realistic cure is to extract the oil and gas; by fracking!
First time I’ve ever heard that particularly ridiculous conspiracy theory. Conspiracists are actually very rare in the ranks of skeptics. Those few who do exist are keenly sought after by people like Lewandowsky who sees his mission in life as making us all out to be totally whack. If you contact him he’ll be very pleased to get to know you. Heck he’ll probably write a whole paper about you!
Ethanol sucks as a fuel…
Sean says:
June 23, 2013 at 1:22 pm
“Ban biofuels”
Disagree… the solution to the problem of government intervention isn’t more government intervention (i.e. banning a specific fuel type).
The solution is to stop subsidizing it and let it compete with conventional fuels on its own merits (this goes hand in hand with ending any subsidies enjoyed by conventional fuel producers.)
Biofuel subsidies exist in many forms:
1. Farm subsidies and crop insurance plans that encourage corn growers to overproduce,
2. Tax credits and incentives for ethanol production,
3. Blending mandates that require the purchase of ethanol and other biofuels by petroleum refiners and distributors,
4. Tax incentives for fuel retailers to install equipment and infrastructure for alternative fuels.
5. Exemptions from excise taxes applied to convention fuels.
Here is a summary table of US Federal and State Laws promoting alternative fuel use: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/laws/matrix/tech Note there are more than 750 laws specifically promoting ethanol and biodiesel.
The problem isn’t the biofuel itself… the problem is the the distortions caused by governments interfering in the marketplace.
From what I gather there is a land grab race in Africa, Asia & Latam fueled by foreign companies to produce biofuels.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/30/us-africa-biofuels-idUSTRE67T27M20100830
http://www.amazon.com/Biofuels-Land-Grabbing-Security-Africa/dp/1848138784
Why produce biofuels when the fuel is already in the ground? The sooner we end this madness the better. I see a catastrophe looming.
I’m reminded of the 10:10 video of a few years back in which kids were blown up if they did not reduce “carbon emissions” to save the planet. That video was not tongue-in-cheek, though.
The ethanol mandate is very likely unconstitutional. We are being forced to buy something we may not want, which decreases mileage, and does possible damage to our engines, adding expense there. But it doesn’t stop there. We as taxpayers are paying through the nose for the “privelege” of putting something we don’t want in our engines, by virtue of subsidies. It’s an outrage. Big Green is costing us, big time.
Biofuel, except for that made from waste products, is quite simply a crime against humanity!
I should mention that if Africans are forced against the wall as per fossil fuels they will ACCELERATE their rate of deforestation. I can’t burn oil or gas, fine I’ll head off to the nearest tree with an axe or machete. The global warming con artists are the worst enemies of the environment.
Since President Obama’s father is from Kenya he maybe interested to know that only 16% of the population has access to electricity (World Bank). Luckily for the Kenyans they have the geography to tap into their geothermal resources and are doing so now. Other countries in Africa may not be so lucky and may one day find themselves cooking on solar cookers on a rainy day. What’s one or two days of hunger between friends eh.
Kenya geothermal
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Kenya-in-cheaper-geothermal-option–/-/2558/1471406/-/6osd6j/-/index.html
Kenya access to electricity
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS/countries/KE?display=graph
“Jimbo says:
June 24, 2013 at 4:47 am”
That is already happening, for a fact in Ethiopia, where wood/charcoal burning is, actually, banned, believe it or not with no other source of heating/cooking energy for most people. in 2006, the last time I was there, on an NTO tour some 200kms north of Addis Ababa, the driver stopped at a road-side “shop” and purchased two large bags of charcoal. I guess you could say it was a kind of “black” market. But you are right, people will do what they need to do to survive while in poverty and that is usually at the detriment of the local environment.
PS I don’t have anything against solar cookers; I am against people having no choice.
Patrick, what many people in the relatively comfortable west don’t realise is that deforestation is happening right NOW without the onslaught of biofuel land grabs. With the onslaught gathering pace things are going to get much, much worse for deforestation, hunger, loss of wildlife habitat etc. No wonder some folks at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change tried to get immunity from prosecution for their actions. I think in future people will be tried for CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY and rightly so.
UNFCCC seeking immunity from future prosecution.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/12/unfccc-wants-immunity-from-prosecution-prior-to-rio20/
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/un-climate-scientists-plead-for-immunity-from-criminal-prosecution/
“Jimbo says:
June 24, 2013 at 5:18 am”
Totally agree. I have seen the poverty firsthand. I believe more, in the west, need to see how the other half of the world lives, or tries to at least. I have friends in Ethiopia who once worked for the UN and resigned for the obvious rorting of funds/donations from western countries. More money is spent on whiskey and parties than anything else.
(Ethiopia imported Eucalyptus trees in the ~60’s I think it was. It grows straight, it grows fast, great for building houses and firewood/charcoal, BUT it’s a non-native and has an invasive root system which extracts any ground water it can find and grows like a weed).
If anyone thinks for one second that deforestation won’t be a problem in a world where people are deprived on coal, oil and gas then please read the following.
A good post by William Astley above. Most USA ethanol Corn is used for food. Its recycled through cow fodder.
Do we grow wheat and winter barley instead of Palm Oil?
The subsidies are the crime, they feed corporations who have little regard for humans. Land grabs in Indonesia and other African and South East Asian countries are criminal. Often a farmer will wake up to discover his land being burned, having been sold without him knowing about it. Wait its not his land, living there for generations, nobody told him to register his land.
balance is needed, supplement cheap fossil fuels with competitive biofuels, balance the books, provide local employment and wealth. Its not difficult.
Start righting the wrongs, jail the corporate burners, get them to pay to put the fires out.
Force the watermelons to declare why Oil Palm is evil but wood chips and pellets are gods gift to humanity. Explain how and why???????????????
Is it beyond the experts here to show the difference between coal buning and wood burning in terms of emissions and co2 output.
Why do we keep going in circles. Ethanol is good, no its bad. Facts must exist.
JY says:
June 23, 2013 at 1:09 pm
I’d like to know if any of the big oil companies have been buying up farm land in preparation for the biofuels thing.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
For background see my recent comments: link and link
First, start off with this from an IMF report: the top earners’ share of income in particular has risen dramatically. In the United States the share of the top 1 percent has close to tripled over the past three decades, now accounting for about 20 percent of total U.S. income (Alvaredo and others, 2012).
People like George Soros and Lord Rothschild and even US Universities are getting into the landgrab. Chinese firms and Gulf sheiks are snatching up farmland worldwide.
The reason is they are now big money makers thanks to biofuel: Cash Rental Rates for Iowa Farmland (2013 Survey) have gone from $146 to $197 in 2009, depending on the area, to $210 to $294 in 2013.
Corn prices in March 2013 (high) were $7.13/bu compared to $2.03 in March of 2000 and $2.37 in March of 1990
Land prices in Iowa have gone from $1857/ac in 2000 to $8296/ac in 2012. ($5064 in 2010) The average home price was $207,000 in 2000 and $272,900 in 2010.
To make this farmland available at distressed prices we have the Food Safety Act of 2010 although the US government has been going after farmers with Swat teams since Bush. Feds buying up farmland they [intentionally] flooded; Soros in on it
The Farmland grab is not just in the USA.
Seems violence over land grabbing is happening. Violence hits Nicaraguan rainforest as land invasions mount: … Leaders of Nicaragua’s indigenous Mayangna community are battling an invasion of land speculators and small farmers into the Biosawas Biosphere Reserve, the second largest rainforest in the Americas…
Bankers are of course smack in the middle of this food bubble. How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis
REPORT UNCOVERS WORLD BANK FUNDED LAND GRAB IN UGANDA
The World Bank funding land grabbing in South America
The World Bank has rejected a call to suspend its involvement in large scale agricultural land acquisition following the release of a major report by the international aid agency Oxfam on the negative impact of international land speculation in developing countries, particularly Africa.
And the food cartel is in on the kill too.
ADM profits soar 550 percent as ethanol margins improve
ADM largest political donor
Apr 5 2007: Monsanto Profit Up 23% on Corn-Based Ethanol Demand
Apr 5 2007
April 3, 2009: Monsanto posts record profits
Record profits for Cargill: Cargill reported record profits of $4.24 billion, beating the previous high of $3.95 billion from 2007-08, and a 63% increase… Cargill is a big grain trader.
Gail Combs, excellent post, different country and structure but same result, land stolen. It matters not if for corn, or Oil Palm, or Firewood, its theft and driven by the Man Made Globull warming scam.
The money is in the subsidies, the global markets and transfer pricing. The big plantations here now sell mature plantations for top dollar and buy Jungle land for bottom dollar. That way they maximise their profits.
The land scam is global, take NZ the Maori wins right to land ownership. They then fall liable to land tax. But being a subsistence farming group, they have no money to pay the tax. Thus the land is seized back due to non payment of tax.
same in Indonesia except nobody tells the land owner, the poor farmer, to register his land or pay tax. Thus when they have a buyer, they sell and pocket the money themselves ( the authorities). Sick
American farmland is not renewable, once it is spent, it is gone. Fields need to lay fallow.
This resource requires limits to it’s exploitation. Like perhaps, save it for food producton.
“What about our grandchildren” . Is this not a mantra of the warmistas?
Third world children starve now. Our children will starve later.
What about our grandchildren indeed.