For decades, sensible skeptics have warned that government tariffs and subsidies designed to encourage the conversion of corn to alcohol and requiring fuel distributors to mix this corrosive stuff into our gas tanks was not going to \u201csolve the energy crisis,\u201d reduce dependence on imported oil, or do anything helpful for \u201cthe environment\u201d — unless by \u201cthe environment\u201d you actually meant \u201cthe bank account of Archer-Daniels-Midland.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the critics failed to mention this expensive boondoggle could also promote starvation and food riots around the world, it was probably only because they were afraid of being ridiculed for \u201cpiling on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guess what.<\/p>\n
While both Congressional Democrats and Republicans were cheering a fivefold increase in mandated ethanol use as little as a year ago, and President Bush was calling the cornfuel program a key to his strategy to cut gasoline use by 20 percent by 2010, today The Great Ethanol Mandate seems to meet Count Galeazzo Ciano\u2019s definition of an orphan. (\u201cVictory has many fathers,\u201d etc.)<\/p>\n
Former \u201crenewable fuels\u201d champion Lester Brown now writes in the Washington Post \u201cIt is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur enthusiasm for corn ethanol deserves a second look,\u201d said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., in a House hearing Tuesday.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to believe ethanol is getting “clobbered the way it’s getting clobbered right now” over something as insignificant as some starving Africans, says longtime champion Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.<\/p>\n
What happened?<\/p>\n
Everyone knew all along it takes 1,700 gallons of water and 51 cents in tax credits to create one gallon of ethanol from corn — at which point the stuff still can\u2019t compete without a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff to block the importation of cheaper sugar-cane ethanol from Brazil.<\/p>\n
Everyone has long known we use up more petroleum-based fuel in trucks and tractors and distilleries to produce and transport ethanol than it ever saves us in the tank — and that (speaking of tanks) the stuff is meantime creating unmeasured private costs by rusting out our gas tanks and fuel lines.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s long been clear the 30 million acres of American farmland devoted to growing corn for ethanol this year will consume almost a third of America\u2019s corn crop \u00d0 driving up prices for meats and all other grains, worldwide — while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3 percent of our total petroleum consumption. (If cattle stop eating corn, you have to feed them something else, driving up the price of other grains, even if Sen. Grassley still can\u2019t seem to figure that out.)<\/p>\n
In December, the Congressional Research Service warned that even if we devoted every acre of American cornfields to ethanol production — at who knows what human cost in terms of world-wide hunger and starvation — it still wouldn\u2019t be enough to meet current arbitrary and grossly optimistic federal mandates.<\/p>\n
In February the journal Science reported \u201cCorn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20 percent savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years. …\u201d (Not that this really matters, since current minimal rates of global warming are mostly caused by solar activity and other natural causes, and are a good thing, anyway. More food production.)<\/p>\n
Forests? Being bulldozed for more corn production. O, Bambi and Thumper lovers, what hast thou wrought?<\/p>\n
Suddenly, inspired by the sight of thoroughly predictable food-price riots overseas, political candidates who were happily hopping on the ethanol bandwagon as recently as 2006 are looking for a way out. Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that it may now be more important to help \u201cpeople get something to eat\u201d than to keep pushing the biofuels boondoggle up the hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cCorn ethanol was presented as an almost Holy Grail solution,\u201d moaned Rep. Mike Doyle, D. Penn., this week. \u201cBut I believe its negatives today far outweigh its benefits. … We need to revisit this … and back away from the food-to-fuel policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Would those be the same negatives I and the other skeptics have been warning about for years, Congressman? What did someone do in the interim, teach you simple arithmetic and Economics 101?<\/p>\n
Meantime, the governor of Texas and 26 U.S. senators, including GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain, have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to cut in half this year\u2019s requirement for 9 billion gallons of corn ethanol in order to ease the pressure on rising food costs.<\/p>\n
That would be a start. But washing their hands and pretending they don\u2019t know who gave birth to the biofuel boondoggle will not suffice. Congress needs to repeal the ethanol mandates, subsidies, and protective tariffs immediately. The congressmen need to admit they don\u2019t know a darned thing about energy markets, and vow to stop using billions of our precious tax dollars meddling in matters they don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n
Finally, investors and energy companies need to soberly review where it gets them to rush into programs that couldn\u2019t possibly survive in the unmanipulated market, based on the promise that big federal subsidies are going to make everyone rich.<\/p>\n
The old warning was \u201cRemember Colorado oil shale.\u201d The new one will now be \u201cRemember ethanol.\u201d But the lesson itself is the same: Depending on idiotic congressional enthusiasms is like trying to buy presents for the kids based on last year\u2019s Christmas list. Best to double-check. By now they\u2019ve probably outgrown the Lego set and the Chatty Cathy, and moved on.<\/p>\n
That thing they left you holding? It\u2019s called \u201cthe bag.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For decades, sensible skeptics have warned that government tariffs and subsidies designed to encourage the conversion of corn to alcohol and requiring fuel distributors to mix this corrosive stuff into our gas tanks was not going to \u201csolve the energy crisis,\u201d reduce dependence on imported oil, or do anything helpful for \u201cthe environment\u201d — unless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-12","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}