"First they laugh at you,
then they ignore you, then they fight with you, then you win." -- Ghandi
"Mankind's future depends
on America's energy choices. Let's clean house and abandon the
phony solutions that result in war, environmental ruin,
poverty, hunger, hatred and disease.
We must lead. We must set the example and Build A World That
Works!"TM - Richard D.
Masters
Algae
Biofuels,
Corn
Ethanol
or
Hydrogen?
"Look, Ma. No food!"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The
Grand Oil Party seized upon the cruel Lysenkoism
of corn ethanol to stall development of true renewable energy - but now the Democrats appear
just as eager to
build upon the ruins of the Republican folly.
Cellulosic biofuel was 250 million gallons, now 6.5-25.5 million
gallons Biomass-based diesel was 800 million gallons, and stays
there Advanced biofuel was 1.35 billion gallons, and stays
there. Keep in mind, confusingly, that cellulosic biofuels and
biomass-based biofuels are “nested” within advanced biofuels,
which means that a gallon of cellulosic ethanol counts towards
the cellulosic biofuel mandate and also rolls up into the
overall advanced biofuel volumes.
Power generated by
burning wood, plants and other organic material, which makes up 50
percent of all renewable energy produced in the United States,
according to federal statistics, is facing increased scrutiny and
opposition. That, critics say, is because it is not as
climate-friendly as once thought, and the pollution it causes in
the short run may outweigh its long-term benefits.
"We need
to set realistic targets for ethanol in the United States
instead of just throwing taxpayer money out the window."
Amy Myers Jaffe, a
senior fellow in energy studies at the
Baker Institute and one of the report's authors.
Pedro Alvarez, Joel G. Burken,
James D. Coan,
Marcelo E. Dias De Oliveira,
Rosa Dominguez–Faus,
Diego E. Gomez, Amy Myers Jaffe, Kenneth B. Medlock III,
Susan E. Powers, Ronald Soligo,
Lauren A. Smulcer
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice
University
"We
question the scale to which ethanol can enhance U.S. energy
security by replacing oil-based fuel, and recommend that
Congress order a cost-benefit analysis that compares the volume
of renewable fuel being added to the American transportation
fuel system to the cost per gallon to the American taxpayer to
achieve this marginal addition of non-fossil based supply. We
believe that such an assessment would find that
the extremely high costs
of implementing this program outweigh the indirect benefits to
consumers of the small, marginal reductions in U'S' oil
imports. Therefore, we
do not recommend renewing blender's credits when they expire at
the end of 2009." -- Page 10,
Fundamentals of a Sustainable U.S. Biofuels Policy
US Ethanol Production Poses Economic, Environment Risks
Wall Street Journal
January 6, 2010 The report by the Rice University's Baker
Institute for Public Policy notes that in 2008 the U.S.
government spent $4 billion in biofuel subsidies to replace 2%
of the U.S. gasoline supply. The average cost to
the taxpayer of those substituted barrels of gasoline was
roughly $82 a barrel, or $1.95 per gallon on top of the retail
gasoline price, according to the study.
RELEASED
ENERGY-WATER NEXUS
Many Uncertainties Remain
about National and Regional Effects of Increased Biofuel
Production on Water Resources
Report to the Chairman, Committee on
Science and Technology, House of Representatives
United States Government
Accountability Office November 2009
Water is crucial to many stages
of the biofuel life cycle and is needed
for the growth of the feedstock as well as for fermentation,
distillation, and cooling during the process of converting the
feedstock into biofuel. As biofuel production increases,
questions have emerged about the effects that increased
production could have on the nation’s water resources. ...Many
experts and officials told us that corn cultivation requires
substantial quantities of water, although the amount used
depends on where the crop is grown and how much irrigation water
is used. The primary corn production regions are in the upper
and lower Midwest.... Together, these regions accounted for 89
percent of corn production in 2007 and 2008, and 95 percent of
ethanol production in the United States in 2007. Corn cultivation in
these three regions averages anywhere from 7 to 321 gallons of
irrigation water for every gallon of ethanol produced....
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
THREW AWAY MORE MONEY ON BIOFUEL GIVEAWAY PROGRAMS IN 2009
THAN WAS EVER INVESTED IN FUEL CELL AND HYDROGEN RESEARCH
YOUR ENERGY $$ DOWN THE
RAT HOLE!
THE
GREAT CELLULOSIC ETHANOL FRAUD Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me
twice, shame on me!
Cellulosic ethanol continues to be a
failure
The Ethanol Mandate to Nowhere
Dave Juday The Weekly Standard
November 24, 2009
As then-President George W. Bush said in February 2007, after he
proposed mandating cellulosic fuel use, "we're on the verge of
some breakthroughs that will enable a pile of wood chips to
become the raw materials for fuels that will run your car." What
was lacking in all the euphoria of the time was any common-sense
scrutiny of the product. For example, reconstructing that "pile
of wood chips" into live trees provides a completely different
perspective. It takes one 60 foot tall softwood tree to produce
about 6 gallons of cellulosic ethanol. So, three trees that size
would almost fill up a 20 gallon SUV tank. It takes 20-30 years
of growth to get a 60 foot softwood tree, so one 15 minute fill
up of cellulosic "renewable fuel" could represent up to 90 years
or more of tree growth.
CHASING MEDIOCRITY
- U.S. LOSES ALL LOGIC AND FOCUS
"Thanks for the big bucks, suckers!" Congress to Raid Great
Ethanol Fraud Giveaway Program for "Cash for Clunkers"
Giveaway Program
'Cash For Clunkers' Vote Takes Subsidies From Solar, Ethanol Siobhan Hughes Dow
Jones August 1,
2009 The House of Representatives voted to transfer $2
billion to a program that offers consumers vouchers to trade
in gas-guzzling cars for more fuel-efficient vehicles. To
fund the program, which was running out of money one week
after it was launched, Congress took away
money from a program that backs up loans to renewable energy
companies. That effectively cut the punch of the renewable
program by $20 billion, based on earlier
estimates that about one-tenth of loans guaranteed by the
U.S. would go bad.
Biofuels: US Car Manufacturers Plough a Lonely Furrow The US Environmental Protection Agency wants to boost the
ethanol blend in fuels in a misguided bid to cut emissions George Monbiot The Guardian (UK)
July 22, 2009
The Waxman-Markey Bill, passed recently by the House of
Representatives, leans heavily on biofuels to meet US greenhouse
gas targets. This is only because their total greenhouse impact
has been deliberately ignored by legislators. The US is committed
to ethanol not because of concerns about the environment but
because of the power of the agricultural lobby.
“Well-funded, well-organized interests from the petroleum,
food-processing, and factory-farming industries are stepping
up the paid propaganda campaign against U.S. ethanol. They are
working overtime to persuade public policymakers, opinion
leaders, and the general public that ethanol is responsible
for all the ills of the world.”
Bob Dinneen, president and CEO
Renewable Fuels Association
Ethanol Producer MagazineJune 16, 2009
WELFARE-FRANKENSTEIN ETHANOL STATES THREATEN CLIMATE BILL
Ethanol Rebellion Building in
Congress House Ag chair says he'll 'bring this
climate bill down' over indirect land use Dan Looker Agriculture Online
May 16, 2009
Next week, Peterson
expects the House Energy and Commerce Committee, headed by
Representative Henry Waxman of California, to pass a climate
change bill. But he thinks he may have enough votes to defeat
Waxman's bill when the full House votes on it. Peterson's bill
that reins in the EPA has the backing of his committee's top
Republican, Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, all 29
Democrats on the committee, and by Monday, probably most of
the Republicans. As of Friday his bill had support from a few
other House Democrats, with 42 co-sponsors joining Peterson
and Lucas in opposing the EPA. House Republicans are expected
to vote as a block against the climate bill, anyway. So
Peterson said he'll need 37 Democrats to defeat the climate
bill.
Ethanol Eyes Only
Minnesota's Collin
Peterson is evidently willing to throw climate-change
legislation under the bus to coddle an unsuccessful industry.
Craig Cox, Midwest VP for the Environmental
Working Group
Minneapolis StarTribune (MN)
May 20, 2009
The tirade that House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin
Peterson of Minnesota recently delivered accusing the
Environmental Protection Agency of sinking the corn-ethanol
industry has many of us in the environmental community
scratching our heads. Peterson accused federal officials of
being "in bed with the oil companies" because their
science-based analysis found that corn ethanol doesn't reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions as much as the industry claims.
On Friday, Peterson's anger turned to threats in comments to
Agriculture.com that included: "... If they don't fix this,
I'm going to bring this climate bill down," a reference to
legislation he introduced the day before to strip the
science-based analysis of biofuels from the Renewable Fuel
Standard. Apparently,
the
chairman intends to hold critical climate-change legislation
hostage unless corn ethanol receives yet another free pass.
What has Peterson and the corn-ethanol lobby so upset is that
the EPA took into consideration "indirect land use change" --
technical jargon for factoring in the climate-damaging gases
that will be released when forests or grasslands are plowed
under and planted with crops to make up for the corn used to
make ethanol. When
EPA scientists factor in indirect land use change, as they are
required to do by law, it turns out corn ethanol likely
increases rather than decreases greenhouse-gas emissions.
Peterson has failed to mention, however, that Congress
already made sure corn ethanol was protected from any
scientific assessment of its impact on the environment when it
passed the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. Buried
in the law are provisions that exempt every gallon of corn
ethanol from the requirement to reduce greenhouse gases that
all other biofuels have to meet to qualify as a "renewable
fuel." The EPA estimates that these provisions grandfather in
15 billion gallons of corn ethanol, 6 billion gallons more
than was produced in 2008, whether putting that fuel in our
gas tanks helps protect our climate or not.
The upshot is that not a single U.S. corn-ethanol producer
has to worry about what EPA is proposing to do after months of
work and consulting with dozens of scientists. Why the
hysteria around indirect land use change or any other
scientific issues when they've already snuck in under the bar?
The corn lobby and its patrons in Washington are desperate to
distract attention from just how well they are being treated
in the EPA proposal. The real problem for
U.S. corn-ethanol producers is that there is no market for
those 15 billion gallons of grandfathered corn ethanol.
Hence the push by the industry for yet another favor: getting
EPA to allow blending gasoline with 15 percent ethanol, and
demanding that the agency skip the testing it is required to
do under the Clean Air Act to make sure higher blends of
ethanol don't pollute the air. Ethanol interests
likewise want to ignore the protests of automakers and
producers and owners of small engines -- from boats to
snowmobiles to lawnmowers. Who will have to pay when billions
of dollars of equipment is damaged by the enriched ethanol
Washington may force consumers to buy? One wonders what
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must be thinking of Peterson's
reckless proposal to hold one of her and the president's most
important priorities -- climate-change legislation -- hostage
to the already well-served interests of the corn-ethanol
industry. Particularly given the fact that
Department of Energy data reveal that ethanol already pockets
two-thirds of all federal support for renewable energy.
As
ever, the industry wants even more. The
threat of climate change is real, and farmers are particularly
vulnerable to the droughts, severe storms and other damaging
effects of a warming climate. Climate change is threatening
the soil and water resources on which agriculture and our
environment depend.
Congress must ignore the special pleadings of the
corn-ethanol industry and its champions on the Agriculture
Committee and quickly pass a strong climate-change bill. A recent plea from
the National Farmer's Union for Peterson to reconsider his
opposition to climate legislation underscores the fact that at
least some members of the agriculture community can see both
the potential financial opportunity in cap-and-trade policy
and the damage global warming will do. It also highlights the
danger of tunnel vision incurred by a single-minded catering
to a corn-ethanol industry that seems incapable of making a
profit despite lavish government subsidies and top-down
mandates from inside the Beltway.
Craig Cox is the Midwest vice president for the Environmental
Working Group (EWG) and a former USDA undersecretary for
natural resources. EWG describes itself as a nonprofit
research organization that uses information to protect human
health and the environment.
Factual Analysis Debunks Corn Ethanol Industry’s
Call to Waive Clean Air Act Fuel Standards Environmental Working Group
May 2009 We are writing to urge the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to deny the petition submitted by the
industry consortium Growth Energy to increase by 50 percent the
allowable amount of ethanol in gasoline, from 10 percent in E10
fuel to 15 percent in the proposed E15 fuel.
FUEL CELLS VS. THE GREAT
ETHANOL FRAUD
OBAMA AND CHU EXPOSED AS BIOFUEL BIGOTS
"It takes a lot of land to make a
small amount of energy. Academic studies have concluded that
if the world gets even 10% of its energy from these new kinds
of crops, most tropical forests will probably disappear."
Tim Searchinger, Princeton
Earlier studies exposed corn ethanol as a
carbon catastrophe; the EPA had to use extremely generous
assumptions to produce scenarios in which it's even remotely
attractive as a fuel alternative.
...Study after study suggests that growing
fuel could be a disaster for the planet, while raising global
food prices and promoting global food riots. The amount of grain
it takes to fill an SUV with ethanol could feed an adult for a
year; we need every acre of farmland to feed the world.
President Obama never
claimed to be a reformer when it came to ethanol, and he and
Vilsack have been big supporters of next-generation biofuels.
The Clean Energy ScamMichael Grunwald
Time March 27 2008 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. Even
cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass
...looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY IN BRAIN CELL CRISIS!
Europe &
Japan Assured Global Dominance as U.S. Retreats
The Energy Department will continue to
pay for research into stationary fuel cells, which Dr. Chu
said could be used like batteries on the power grid and do not
require compact storage of hydrogen.
“This is a strange turn
of events.
We are very close to the tipping point.
To stop that now is
a waster of taxpayer dollars.” Shannon Baxter-Clemmons
Executive director of the S.C. Hydrogen & Fuel Cell
Alliance
"We should go to
Washington
and make the case that not funding
the long-term solution is short-sighted.” Mayor Bob Coble, Columbia, S.C.
Obama’s Cuts Deal Blow to S.C. Hydrogen Economy Jeff Wilkinson The State
(SC) May 9, 2009
"As I thought about the
decision, how it was worded, and the fact that the budget was
zeroed, I didn’t feel I could in any way appear to be
supportive. ...And quite honestly, I didn’t want to put my
energy into debating people who ...have never touched real
hardware, tried to build businesses in this area or dealt with
real customers using real products.” J. Byron McCormick
former executive director of General Motors’ fuel-cell
program
Fight for Hydrogen Funding Jim Motavalli New York
Times May 12, 2009 Some
critics of the Energy Department’s decision are personalizing
this sudden loss of confidence in the fuel-cell transportation
future, seeing it as
a misstep by Mr. Chu, whose work at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory centered on biofuels.
“The vehicles have been
invented.
The issues are infrastructure
and how do we reduce cost.” John Hanson, Toyota
“Hydrogen is a key to
solving the nation’s mid- to long- term issues of energy
security, reduced petroleum use and greenhouse gas emissions
as well as being part of the reinvention of General Motors.”
Larry Burns, GM
Honda, GM Stick to Fuel-Cell Plans as Obama Guts Hydrogen
FundsA. Ohnsman, T. Seeley Bloomberg May 11, 2009 The policy shift is “very disappointing,” said Dan Sperling,
director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the
University of California, Davis and a member of the state’s
Air Resources Board. The agency has authority to set
environmental rules for carmakers and other industries
rivaling the federal government’s.
“It’s unclear how we’re going to get big reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions without hydrogen,” Sperling said.
“Hydrogen is the most challenging in terms of implementation
because of the need for new fueling infrastructure.” That could be created
in 10 to 15 years at less cost than the “$6 billion to $10
billion” the U.S. provides annually in subsidies for corn
ethanol, Sperling said.
Washington DC----The National Hydrogen Association
(NHA) and U.S. Fuel Cell Council (USFCC) issued the
following joint statement regarding the Obama
Administration's FY 2010 budget request for the U.S
Department of Energy.
"The cuts proposed in the DOE hydrogen and fuel cell program
threaten to disrupt commercialization of a family of
technologies that are showing exceptional promise and
beginning to gain market traction.
"Fuel cell vehicles are not a science experiment. These are
real vehicles with real marketability and real benefits.
Hundreds of fuel cell vehicles have collectively logged
millions of miles.
"Both the National Academy of Sciences and NHA's recent
Energy Evolution report conclude that a portfolio of
vehicle technologies is needed to achieve the nation's
energy and environmental security goals and that
hydrogen is essential to success. Hydrogen also advances
the Obama Administration's goals of greener power
generation and a smarter power grid.
"The newest fuel cell vehicles get 72 miles per gallon
equivalent with no compromise in creature comforts. Fuel
cell buses operating in revenue service achieve twice
the fuel economy of diesel buses. Hydrogen production
costs are already competitive with gasoline. Projected
vehicle costs have been reduced by 75%. These are
accomplishments of the Department's own program in
partnership with industry. It would truly be a
government waste to squander them by walking away just
as success is in sight.
"The National Academy recommended a portfolio approach and we
are frankly puzzled at the Energy Department's decision
to ignore that recommendation even as the Department
uses other material from the same report to justify its
proposed cut.
"We are also concerned that the Department appears to be
walking away from its Market Transformation activities,
which support fuel cell deployment in early commercial
applications. This Congressionally-mandated program is
demonstrating the ability of fuel cells to provide a
competitive and green alternative to battery-based
systems in vehicles and in power supply.
"Finally, we are concerned that the Department has proposed
to cut funds for the Solid State Energy Conversion
Alliance (SECA). SECA success could dramatically lower
the cost of carbon sequestration, improve power plant
efficiency, and enable a virtually pollution-free coal
plant in the future. Additional funding will hasten SECA
progress."
The NHA and USFCC collectively represent more than 200
companies and organizations.
CONTACT:
NHA: Patrick Serfass, 202-223-5547, ext. 366 serfassp@HydrogenAssociation.org
Energy Department Slashes Hydrogen Transportation Funding in
Proposed BudgetGreen
Car Advisor May 7, 2009
Chu's belief that it is best to cut hydrogen spending and
divert the funding elsewhere isn't necessarily shared by
Congress, which must approve the budget, said Patrick
Serfass, the National Hydrogen Association's vice president
for technology. ...Serfass worries that
if the Obama administration turns its back on hydrogen
fuel-cell vehicles, the
automakers will take their research and development programs
to Europe or Asia and the U.S. will lose the lead in
technology that will be a critical part of an
oil-independent future.
The researchers report that ethanol
derived from corn grown in Nebraska, for example, would
require 50 gallons of water per mile driven, when all the
water needed in irrigation of crops and processing into
ethanol is considered.
...bioelectricity outperforms ethanol across a range
of feedstocks, conversion technologies, and vehicle classes.
Bioelectricity produces
an average 81% more transportation kilometers and 108% more
emissions offsets per unit area cropland than cellulosic
ethanol. These results suggest that alternative bioenergy
pathways have large differences in how efficiently they use the
available land to achieve transportation and climate goals.
The pilot results compare to production rate
of 19,915 gallons per acre per year, which is substantially above
results realized in other algae bench and pilot tests, and have
not been independently confirmed. They are quite close to the
theoretical efficiency limits of photosynthesis, but in this case
the target fuel is ethanol, rather than capturing lipids for
biodiesel that are 20-45 percent of overall biomass.
Process Projects Ltd. South Africa Why Wild Algae Is A Great Ethanol Producer In contrast to algae selected for their high oil content,
wild algae mostly have low oil content (<10%) as they store
their energy in the form of starch. Also, as algae are water
borne, they do not require great structural strength.
Consequently, most algae does not have lignin, only cellulose.
The starch and cellulose can be broken down by hydrolysis to
form simple sugars such as glucose. Due to the lack of lignin,
the hydrolysis operating conditions are far milder than those
required to hydrolyse lignocellulose.
Once the sugars have been formed, yeast can be added to the
solution to convert the sugars to ethanol. Thereafter, the
ethanol can be distilled out of the solution, dehydrated and
sold. The residual stillage can be digested to break down the
proteins, etc. The biogas produced can be used to heat the
distillation process making the process largely energy self
sufficient.
The major benefit of wild algae is that they are able to
double their weight every 24 hours. Furthermore, as they are
grown in open raceways, the capital cost of production is
relatively low compared to the algae to oil process. However,
the conversion plant is more capital intensive.
In 2007, the United States used 24% of its national corn harvest
to produce ethanol, which contributed 1.3% of national liquid
fuel use (transportation fuels plus other uses of liquid fuels).
This illustrates the difficulty of reaching current mandates for
production of liquid biofuels. Meeting a goal of 10%
substitution of liquid transportation fuels globally would
require some combination of a large increase in the area devoted
to biofuels crops and an unprecedented
increase in the yield of biofuel crops per unit of land, water,
and fertilizers.
Estimates of the range of new agricultural land required to meet
a global target of 10% biofuel substitution range from 118 to
508 million hectares, depending on the crop type and assumed
productivity level. This compares with the current area of
arable land in the world of 1,400 million hectares.
...However, the ability to increase crop productivity is not
infinite and population growth and improved, higher protein
diets are placing ever-greater demands on land for food
production. Thus,
competition and conflict with biofuel production using current
methods will likely increase in a world where some one billion
people are already underfed.
....Current mandates and targets for liquid biofuels should be
reconsidered in light of the potential adverse environmental
consequences, potential displacement or competition with food
crops, and difficulty of meeting these goals without large-scale
land conversion.
Algal farms at Hutt Lagoon, Western Australia
(Google Earth image, April 18th 2006)
We have examined various scenarios
involving the growth of algae and the sequestering of carbon
during its growth. End-uses for algae are found in the
production of food supplements for humans; animal feed; oil
extraction and its transesterification to produce biodiesel;
electricity production upon combustion directly or by
transforming the algae
to methane anaerobically; or fuel production via pyrolysis,
gasification or anaerobic digestion. In every case, the
greenhouse gases sequestered by the algae are released into the
atmosphere, so that greenhouse gas benefits arise only as
offsets when the algal use displaces the combustion of a fossil
fuel in a vehicle or for the production of electricity. This
paper examines the greenhouse gas, costs and energy balance on a
life-cycle basis for algae grown in salt-water ponds and used to
produce biodiesel and electricity. Under the conditions
described and the data assumed, it is shown that
it is possible to
produce algal biodiesel at less cost and with a substantial
greenhouse gas and energy balance advantage over fossil diesel.
However, when scaled up to large commercial production levels,
the costs may exceed those for fossil diesel. The economic
viability is highly dependent upon algae with high oil yields
capable of high production year-round, which has yet to be
demonstrated on a commercial scale. ...it may be
concluded that it could be possible to produce biodiesel from
algae grown in ponds at a lower cost than ULS diesel; in the
best case (with an adjacent ammonia plant) the biodiesel is 42%
cheaper. Biodiesel grown with the help of CO2 being trucked in
every day enjoys a 33% advantage, which indicates that it may be
economically viable to grow algae for biodiesel production even
without an attached power station or other extensive producer of
CO2....
ANOTHER
HEADACHE FOR U.S. ETHANOL PRODUCERS
"If government funds become short,
subsidies for fuels will be looked at very carefully. When they
are, there's no way ethanol production can survive." Tad Patzek,
University of California Berkeley
UC Scientist Says Ethanol UsesMore Energy Than It
Makes
Elizabeth Svoboda
San Francisco Chronicle
June 27, 2005
Bipartisan Senate Bill Seeks
Lower Tariffs on Ethanol Imports Ben GemanThe New York Times
March 18, 2009
The farm bill knocked the blender's
credit from 51 cents per gallon to 45 cents per gallon. A new
Senate measure is aimed at knocking down the 54-cent-per-gallon
import tariff and the 2.5 percent ad valorem tariff to achieve
"parity" with the lowered blender's tax credit.
"This new twist of
outside ownership -- particularly by an oil company --
really blurs the lines of oil vs. corn." Sarah Janecek, Politics in
Minnesota
What Does Big Oil Want With Corn Refineries? Tom Webb
Pioneer Press/Soya Tech Feb 10, 2009
WAS THE GREAT ETHANOL
FRAUD
JUST A PLOY TO TRANSFER THE MASSIVE BUILD-UP OF AMERICA'S
TAXPAYER-FINANCED AGRICULTURAL FUEL INFRASTRUCTURE TO BIG OIL?
Valero will pay $350 million for a group
of five plants in South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota and an
Indiana development site, Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based
VeraSun said Tuesday. Valero also will purchase an Iowa
production plant for $72 million, a Nebraska facility for $55
million and other assets.
Shell will no longer invest in
renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power
because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said
today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental
groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.
Nova Biosource files for Chapter 11 Houston Business Journal
March 31, 2009
Affiliated entities included in the bankruptcy petition
include: Nova Holding Clinton Co. LLC, Nova Biofuels Clinton Co.
LLC, Nova Holding Seneca LLC, Nova Biofuels Seneca LLC, Nova
Holding Trade Group LLC, Nova Biofuels Trade Group LLC, NBF
Operations LLC, Nova Biosource Technologies LLC and Biosource
America Inc.
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Withdraws from Food Before
Fuel CoalitionNCBA March 13, 2009
WASHINGTON – The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA)
announced today that as part of a revamped strategy to eliminate
government intervention in the renewable energy market, it is
withdrawing as a member of the Food Before Fuel Coalition.
“The Food Before Fuel Coalition has been a good partner in
our efforts to raise awareness about the harmful impacts of the
government’s excessive subsidization of the ethanol industry,”
says Gary Voogt, President of NCBA and rancher from Marne, Mich.
“As the Coalition’s work broadens, however, we remain focused on a
single goal: ensuring a level playing field for our cattle
producers.”
Since January of 2008, cattle feeders have lost a staggering
$4 billion because of high feed costs. Tough economic times
combined with high corn prices and increased input costs have
forced many producers to reduce their herd sizes.
A
report released by the Congressional Research Service in September
of 2008 shows the
dramatic increase in production costs in the past years.
According to the report, “the main driver was feed, which may
account for 60%-70% of total livestock production costs in any
given year. Overall, total
U.S. feed expenses were forecast to reach a record-high $48
billion in 2008, a jump of nearly $10 billion or 26% over 2007—a
year that was $6.7 billion higher than 2006.”
"Soaring feed costs
and government payments to the ethanol industry are hurting small
businesses and family ranches,” Voogt explains. “Cattle
producers don’t ask for subsidies, just equal footing.” NCBA is working to
level the playing field for America’s cattle producers by reducing
or eliminating the three government interventions for the ethanol
industry: the renewable fuels mandate, the blender’s tax credit,
and the import tariff.
NCBA continues to support a market-based approach for the
production and usage of ethanol. Our members and producers know
that the marketplace offers many adequate risk management tools to
utilize when building an industry. Government interventions via
mandates and subsidies are never substitutes for good business
practices.
"Our organization has a long history of advocacy for
scientific research and development of promising new
technologies,” Voogt stated. “We
support the development of alternative and renewable energy
sources that do not compete with livestock for feed.”
NCBA continues to support an open and free market as the best
driver of competition and innovation in all industries, including
the renewable energy sector.
“After 30 years of
support, corn-based ethanol is still reliant on government
subsidies to be commercially viable,” Voogt says. “It
is time to stop propping up this industry at the expense of
cattle producers."
What I’ve seen so far
suggests that Obama, no longer dependent on a single lobby,
has swung heavily toward a
science- and merit-based approach. Energy efficiency, which
as recently as last year was declared the red-headed stepsister of
renewables, doomed to be ignored because it’s not as “sexy” as
solar panels or electric cars, has taken center stage. Meanwhile,
measures that make little
sense — corn ethanol is questionable — have been pushed to the
side.
U.S.
Renewable Funding 2008
So what was the
real role of the cynical corn ethanol scam? Perhaps
Obama now understands that it served to stop progress in true
renewable energy dead in its tracks. That it crippled or
killed or drove offshore a multitude of promising young
companies that would have provided U.S. leadership in the new
high-tech energy arena - had they not been bled to death.
-- Richard D.
Masters March 8, 2009
The [Republican energy] plan was a clear reflection of
Cheney's worldview, which he once summed up by saying that
"conservation may be a
sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a
sound, comprehensive energy policy."
The Cheney report echoes
a long-held belief
among Republicans in general and Texas-based
Republicans in particular. It was a belief best summarized in
1973 by Richard Nixon's political advisor and hatchet man,
John Erlichman, who told another Nixon policy maker,
"Conservation is not
the Republican ethic."
The entirety of Cheney's energy polich can be summarized in
one sentence: We can produce our way out of this mess. The fundamental
approach of Cheney and his minions began by casting aside any
discussions about efficiency, conservation, renewables and
fuel cells, and focusing solely on how America's major energy
companies could produce ever-increasing amounts of fuel. It
was an energy policy written by, and for, America's Big Energy
companies. pp.222
Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's
Superstate Robert Bryce
PublicAffairs 2005
"The United States, in a
misguided effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by
substituting grain-based fuels, is generating global food
insecurity on a scale not seen before." Lester Brown, President, Earth
Policy Institute
The Geopolitics Of Food ScarcitySpiegel
(Germany) February
11, 2009
US BIODIESEL LOSES
EUROPEAN MARKET EU
Panel Approves Duties on U.S. Biodiesel Darren Ennis Reuters
March 3, 2009
A key European Union trade panel has slapped
anti-dumping and
anti-subsidy duties on imports of biodiesel from the United States,
sources with knowledge of the decision said Tuesday.
Goodbye, Ethanol: The
Dam Breaks "Thanks for the big bucks, suckers!"
House lawmakers passed the
first of Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's measures aimed at boosting roads
funding, voting 69-0 to dump a tax
exemption for ethanol and biodiesel that may be costing Idaho $4 million
annually in lost revenue.
The Curse of Frankenstein:
LOBBY GROUP TO FORCE IOWANS TO BUY ETHANOL!
IOWA:
Amount Paid in Ethanol Tax is Stagnant Dan Piller
DeMoines Register (IA)
March 2, 2009 Iowa, unlike
neighboring Minnesota, lacks a state mandate for ethanol fuel use.
"We're watching this closely," said [Monte Shaw, executive director of
the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association]. "We don't plan to go to the
Legislature this session for action, but we may be compelled to do so
next year."
NEW YORK:
Bankrupt Ethanol Plant Announces 25 Layoffs Catie O'Toole
The Post-Standard (NY)
March 1, 2009 On Jan. 14,
more than two years after construction began on the $200 million ethanol
plant, Northeast Biofuels filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization
without ever having reached full operation.
OHIO:
Coshocton Ethanol Lays Off 30 Employees Kathie Dickerson Newark
Advocate (OH) February
28, 2009 The parent company of Coshocton
Ethanol LLC [AltraBiofuels] is on the verge of filing bankruptcy....
Ethanol Plants No Panacea For Local Economies, Study Finds Science Daily February 27, 2009 The study found that plants are
beset with a host of uncertainties, ranging from shifts in federal
energy policy and global economics to changing technology that threatens
the long-term viability of corn as an ethanol blend.
Ethanol and the Local EconomySarah Low, Andrew Isserman Economic Development
Quarterly February
2009
IOWA:
Unfriendly EPA Ethanol Rule Worries Ag Secretary Dan Looker Agriculture Online
February 24, 2009 For months, supporters of the ethanol industry have worried that the
Low Carbon Fuel Standard would include the concept of indirect land use.
That's the assumption that when an acre of corn is produced for ethanol,
an acre of new cropland has to come into production somewhere else to
replace it. Environmentalists have assumed that this pressure on land
use means that rainforests will be cut down or grasslands plowed up. In
both cases, that can release a lot of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. The state of California is already using the indirect land
use concept to calculate the carbon output of ethanol.
WISCONSIN:
Ethanol Bankruptcy Leaves Trail of Creditors Kathleen Gallagher Journal
Sentinel (WS) February 21, 2009
The ethanol plant
operator's woes also are rippling across the state. They've forced a
large grain dealer into involuntary receivership; prompted farmers to
question whether that dealer will honor its contracts; and landed some
of Wisconsin's biggest players in the rough-and-tumble ethanol industry
in a heap of financial trouble.
Sheikh Mohamed Al-Najimi, member of the
Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy, based his statement on a
saying by the prophet that prohibited all kinds of dealings with
alcohol including buying, selling, carrying, serving, drinking,
and manufacturing, the Saudi newspaper Shams reported Thursday.
Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad would violate the
prohibition if they used bio fuel, he said, since it “is basically
made up of alcohol.”
Biofuels Are Not So Green Prodosh Mitra
Times of India
February 19, 2009
In his haste to go green, Barack Obama could be ignoring
warnings about the perils of switching to biofuels.
...For each billion ethanol-equivalent
gallons of fuel produced and combusted in the US, the combined
climate-change and health costs are $469 million for gasoline,
$472–952 million for corn
ethanol depending on biorefinery heat source (natural gas,
corn stover, or coal)....
Increasing liquid fuel production is not the only approach to
meeting society’s growing transportation energy needs.Technological and
behavioral solutions include improved vehicle efficiency, public
transportation, redesign of urban landscapes, and hybrid, plug-in
electric, natural gas, and
hydrogen vehicles.
In total, the considerable societal costs of GHG and PM2.5
emissions, and of other effects not yet quantified, should be
given full weight in policy choices among energy sources,
efficiency, and conservation.
How will the new
U.S. President deal
with the Great Ethanol Fraud?
As Congress and the incoming
Obama administration plan the nation’s next major investments in
green energy, they need to take a hard, clear-eyed look at
Department of Energy data documenting corn-based ethanol’s
stranglehold on federal renewable energy tax credits and subsidies.
Solar, wind and other renewable energy sources have struggled
to gain significant market share with modest federal support.
Meanwhile, corn-based ethanol has accounted for fully three-quarters
of the tax benefits and two-thirds of all federal subsidies allotted
for renewable energy sources in 2007.
A little noticed analysis buried in an April 2008 report from
the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA)1 shows that the
corn-based ethanol industry received $3 billion in tax credits in
2007, more than four times the $690 million in credits available to
companies trying to expand all other forms of renewable energy,
including solar, wind and geothermal power.
Ethanol made from corn has extremely limited potential to
reduce the country’s dependence on imported oil, and current
production systems likely worsen greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover,
despite billions in federal
subsidies on top of a government mandate that forces motorists to
buy ethanol, the industry’s financial outlook remains highly
unstable.
ANOTHER GOVERNMENT
GIVEAWAY TO ETHANOL
EPA Raises US Renewable Fuel Standard
to 10.21 Percent Biofuels Digest November
18, 2008
In Washington, the US Environmental Protection Agency officially
raised the 2009 Renewable Fuel Standard to 10.21 percent, or 11.1
billion gallons of ethanol, compared to 7.76 percent or 9 billion
gallons in 2008.
ETHANOL INDUSTRY IN COLLAPSE
DESPITE 52-CENT PER GAL SUBSIDY
"If government funds become short,
subsidies for fuels will be looked at very carefully. When they
are, there's no way ethanol production can survive."
Tad Patzek,
University of California Berkeley
UC Scientist Says Ethanol UsesMore Energy
Than It Makes
Elizabeth Svoboda
San Francisco Chronicle
June 27, 2005
U.S. Ethanol Fad Dries Up K. Allison and S. Kirchgaessner
Financial Times (UK) Oct
21, 2008
Investors, such as Microsoft’s
Bill Gates, are sitting on billions of dollars in losses after
buying into the corn-based ethanol industry that George W. Bush
embraced as the answer to US energy woes.
....Investors who bought and held shares in hotly anticipated market
listings of Aventine Renewable Energy, VeraSun Energy and other
ethanol producers that have gone public since 2005, have seen the
value of their holdings plummet as much as 90 per cent from their
flotation price, in spite of billions of dollars of government
support for the industry.
Ethanol Group's PBS Protest May Reveal Industry Panic David Greising Chicago
Tribune (IL) October 24,
2008 The Renewable Fuels
Association has put a twist on the old Holmes deduction. In
attacking "Heat," an examination of climate change issues by the
Public Broadcasting System's "Frontline" program, the RFA has made a
ruckus over something it should have left alone...
This is the program the Ethanol Industry were protesting:
Outstanding
PBS Frontline Special
HEAT: Can We Roll Back Global Warming?
WATCH IT ONLINE!
Oct 21, 2008 For years, big
business -- from oil and coal companies to electric utilities to car
manufacturers -- have resisted change to environmental policy and
stifled the debate over climate change in America and around the
globe. Now, facing rising pressure from governments, green groups
and investors alike, big business is reshaping its approach to the
environment. With the election looming, FRONTLINE producer Martin
Smith investigates what some businesses are doing to fend off new
regulations and how others are repositioning themselves to prosper
in a radically changed world. From the
transcript:
Prof. DANIEL KAMMEN, U.C. Berkeley Inst. of the Environment:Corn
ethanol is simply a bad biofuel. And it's a bad biofuel several
times over. We, in this country, have optimized corn, ironically, to
be as greenhouse-gas-intensive as possible. We reward farmers for
using more fertilizer, more irrigation because those things have
been cheap historically. So we have lots of greenhouse gasses and
carbon embedded in what it takes to grow an ear of corn. And the
analysis that my lab and many others have done says very clearly
that corn is simply not a good feed stock for biofuels.
MARTIN SMITH: Regardless, the corn lobby
continues to throw its weight around Washington and has helped the
auto companies win a fuel efficiency credit for every E85 car they
sell, even though very few drivers have access to ethanol filling
stations.
[on camera] You say you have 2.5 million E85-ready vehicles
on the road.
BETH LOWERY: Yes.
MARTIN SMITH: How many of those are
actually using ethanol?
BETH LOWERY: Well, there's a few pumps
there, and also-
MARTIN SMITH: A few. But there's not much.
BETH LOWERY: Right. It's not widespread.
MARTIN SMITH: Negligible amounts.
BETH LOWERY: It's not widespread.
MARTIN SMITH: [voice-over] In fact,
out of a total of 120,000 gas stations nationwide, only 1,600 offer
ethanol, most in the Midwest. California has just 10, New Jersey
none.
[on camera] We've invested a lot of money in ethanol. Is that
getting us anything?
AMY MYERS JAFFE, Baker Institute, Rice Univ.:The
corn-based ethanol program is going to be considered one of the
biggest follies ever implemented in energy policy anywhere in the
world in the history of energy policy.
Peak Oil: Hydrogen critic Richard Heinberg
takes a sobering look at global agriculture running short of fossil fuel in
The Food and Farming Transition
Global Public Media
November 2008
Another Inconvenient Truth
How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating climate
change 58 pages
Oxfam International
June 25, 2008
Biofuels Are Not So Green Prodosh Mitra
Times of India
February 19, 2009
In his haste to go green, Barack Obama could be ignoring
warnings about the perils of switching to biofuels.
WASHINGTON – There is a growing consensus in the environmental
community that federal government subsidies and mandates for
corn-based ethanol have produced unintended, yet potentially
catastrophic environmental consequences, with little or no
return to taxpayers in energy security, protection from global
warming, or reducing the cost of driving.
Recent reports that the ethanol industry is seeking
additional billions in financial assistance from the federal
government in a proposed stimulus package have spurred the Clean
Air Task Force, Environmental Working Group, Friends of Earth,
and the Network for New Energy Choices to release the following
joint statement in opposition to additional federal support for
the corn ethanol industry. It should be noted that the ethanol
industry already receives more taxpayer-funded support than any
other renewable energy program; two out of every three dollars
the U.S. government spends on what it classifies as renewable
energy programs, including wind, solar, and geothermal, goes to
the ethanol industry.
“With evidence mounting that biofuels are worsening global
warming and harming water quality and wildlife habitat, it makes
no sense for the federal government to lavish billions more on
an industry already flush with government assistance. It is time
for ethanol to stand on its own.”
In Iowa alone, greenhouse gas emissions from corn ethanol
plants are equal to 1.4 million additional cars on the road. The
rush to grow more corn for ethanol has made an already bad
situation worse—setting back efforts to stem pollution of
streams, lakes, and drinking water, expanding the Gulf of Mexico
‘Dead Zone’ that is now the size of New Jersey, and destroying
precious wildlife habitat that is now being plowed under in a
rush to plant more crops for fuel.
Contact:
Clean Air Task Force – Jonathan Lewis (617) 624-0234 x10
Environmental Working Group – Don Carr (202) 667-6982
Friends of the Earth – Nick Berning (202) 222 0748
Network for New Energy Choices – Dulce Fernandes (212) 991-1062
“There will be a revolution
in this country.
It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line
and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for
it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall
Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions
continue to worsen.” Gerald Celente, CEO
Trends Research Institute
Taiwan's Feng Chia University
has succeeded in boosting the production of hydrogen from biomass to
15 liters per hour, one of the world's top biohydrogen production
rates, a researcher at the university said Friday. Lin Chiu-yu, dean
of the Feng Chia College of Engineering, said at a news conference
at the school's campus in Taichung City that the university began
efforts in 1998 to use facultative anaerobic organisms to produce
hydrogen gas, that could one day power fuel cells in cars and other
devices. ...Lin pointed out that so far, the plant's hydrogen
production rate from biomass using a one-liter reactor has reached
15.09 liters per hour per liter of reactor volume, a world-class
standard.
The bacterium Wu studies, called C.
thermocellum, has the very rare ability to break down tough plant
cellulose and convert it to hydrogen and ethanol. Coupled with its
preference to grow at high temperature, the microorganism promises
distinct advantages as a candidate for developing industrial
hydrogen and ethanol production processes from cellulosic biomass.
After witnessing massive destruction of the Earth's rain
forest to meet 1st World demand for fuel from food, and rising global food
prices and spiraling hunger among the poor as food is burned for fuel, the
European Union is finally beginning to back away from biofuels, focusing
once again on true renewable energy with hydrogen viewed as an energy
carrier of great potential. --
RDM
The European
Commission has proposed that 10 percent of all vehicle fuel come from
renewable sources by 2020, without specifying how much of that should be
biofuels, renewable electricity or hydrogen.
...The European Parliament's influential industry committee
endorsed the overall 10 percent target but voted that at least 40 percent
be achieved with electricity or hydrogen from renewable sources, or
second-generation biofuels from waste.
That would leave just 6 percent coming from traditional
biofuels made from food stocks.
"While the maintenance of a binding target for biofuels is a
bitter pill to swallow, the committee has at least strengthened the
safeguards against the damaging impact of agri-fuels in this directive,"
said Luxembourg Green MEP Claude Turmes.
A STARVING CHILD CONSUMES ENOUGH GRAIN
IN A YEAR TO DRIVE AN SUV ABOUT 90 MILES ON ETHANOL
BIOFUELS: THE "FINAL
SOLUTION" "America, I'm sorry I took your ethanol."
"It's criminal to burn corn for
fuel when we are out of food!" BMO Financial Group strategist
Don Coxe
THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT AND
COMPREHENSIVE REPORT ON THE SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE OF BIOFUELS.
-- RDM
Another
Inconvenient Truth
How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating
climate change 58 PAGES
Oxfam International
June 25, 2008
Summary
Biofuels are presented in rich countries as a solution to two
crises: the climate crisis and the oil crisis. But they may not be a
solution to either, and instead are contributing to a third: the current
food crisis.
Meanwhile the danger is that
they allow
rich-country governments to avoid difficult but urgent decisions about how
to reduce consumption of oil, while offering new avenues to continue
expensive support to agriculture at the cost of taxpayers.
In the meantime, the most serious costs of these policies –
deepening
poverty and hunger, environmental degradation, and accelerating climate
change – are being ‘dumped’ on developing countries.
Neither a solution to the climate crisis…
Rich countries’ biofuel policies currently offer neither a
safe nor an effective means to tackle climate change. By increasing
aggregate demand for agricultural land, they will drive the expansion of
farming into critical carbon sinks such as forests, wetlands, and
grasslands, triggering the release of carbon from soils and vegetation
that will take decades and in some cases
centuries of biofuel production to repay, at a time when emissions need to
peak and fall within the next 10 to 15 years:
•
Analysis published in the
journal Science calculates that the emissions from global land-use
change due to the US corn-ethanol programme will take 167 years to pay
back.
• European Union (EU) biodiesel consumption is driving
spiralling demand for palm oil both for use in biodiesel, but also to
replace rapeseed and other edible oils diverted into the European
biofuel programme. Oxfam estimates that by 2020, the emissions resulting
from land-use change in the palm-oil sector may have reached between 3.1
and 4.6 billion tonnes of CO2 – 46 to 68 times the annual saving the EU
hopes to be achieving by then from biofuels.
Even ignoring land-use change,
biofuels are an overly expensive way of
achieving emissions reductions from transport. Improving car efficiency is
far
more cost effective: while the costs of avoiding a tonne of CO2 through
biofuels run into the hundreds of dollars, ambitious improvements in
vehicle
efficiency can yield profits, as reduced fuel costs exceed technology
costs.
Biomass can be used far more efficiently in static applications such as
commercial boilers or combined heat and power.
…nor a solution to the oil crisis Rich countries’ biofuel policies currently offer neither
a safe nor an effective means to address fuel security. Consumption of oil
in rich countries is so huge that for biofuels to be a significant
alternative requires massive amounts of agricultural production. If the
entire corn harvest of the USA was diverted to ethanol, it would only be
able to replace about one gallon in every six sold in the USA. If the
entire world supply of carbohydrates (starch and sugar crops) was
converted to ethanol, this would only be able to replace at most 40 per
cent of global petrol consumption. Global oilseed production would be
unable even to reach a 10 per cent share of diesel consumption.
Moreover, the costs of using biofuels to improve fuel
security are
prohibitively expensive. The European Commission’s own research body
has estimated that the EU’s proposed 10 per cent biofuel target will cost
about $90bn from now until 2020, and will offer enhanced fuel security
worth only $12bn. Policies to reduce demand for transport fuels, such as
regulation to improve vehicle efficiency, are far safer and more cost
effective.
Meanwhile 30 million people are dragged into poverty
Biofuel mandates and support measures in rich countries are
driving up food prices as they divert more and more food crops and
agricultural land into fuel production. Meanwhile sugarcane ethanol from
Brazil, production of
which has a far less significant impact on global food prices, is excluded
through the use of tariffs.
The World Bank estimates that the price of food has increased
by 83 per
cent in the last three years. For the world’s poor people, who may spend
50–80 per cent of their income on food, this is disastrous. Oxfam
estimates that the livelihoods of
at least 290 million people are immediately threatened by the food crisis,
and the Bank estimates that 100 million people have already fallen into
poverty as a result. Thirty per
cent of price increases are attributable to biofuels, suggesting biofuels
have endangered the livelihoods of nearly 100 million people and dragged
over 30 million into poverty.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
notes that by
forcing up food prices,
rich-country support for biofuels acts as a tax on food – a
regressive tax felt most by poor people for whom food purchases
represent a greater share of income. Last year, it is estimated that
industrialised countries spent $13–15bn ‘taxing’ food, equal to the amount
of funding required to assist those immediately threatened by the food
crisis.
These amounts will continue to spiral as rich countries increase their
consumption of biofuels.
Herein lies the true attraction of ethanol and biodiesel for
rich-country
governments – an avenue for continued support to agriculture. Oxfam calls on
rich countries urgently to dismantle support and incentives for biofuels
in order to avoid further deepening poverty and accelerating climate
change.
Food Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin
New York Times June
30, 2008
When it comes to rice,
India, Vietnam, China and 11 other countries have limited or banned exports.
Fifteen countries, including Pakistan and Bolivia, have capped or halted wheat
exports. More than a dozen have limited corn exports. ...The export limits are
forcing some of the most vulnerable people, those who rely on relief agencies,
to go hungry.
Putting Rich Farmers First
David G. Victor
Newsweek
July 7-14, 2008
In rich countries like
Western Europe's and the United States, high prices could, in theory, make it
easier to wean farmers from lavish subsidies, plugging holes in the public
budget and putting the world's farmers on a more level playing field.
...Lowering subsidies could also lighten farmers' footprints on the landscape;
subsidized and protected farmers usually plow too much land and tread heavily
with fertilizers and pesticides.
Which makes it all the more surprising that the response of the
United States in particular to the food crisis has been to do the opposite of
what would be best for the world economy. Over the last month the U.S. Congress
has passed new legislation that will heap even more cash on farmers.
...It channels money to a wide range of farmers regardless of whether they need
it, and it indexes new subsidies to already high crop prices, which puts the
government on the hook for massive payments when prices eventually decline.
"Everything is going up in price.
There is no escape." Ramirez de la O, Mexican economist
Mexico Freezes Prices on Food Dudley Althaus Houston
Chronicle (TX) June 18,
2008
The price of corn tortillas went up 22 percent early
last month, according to the federal consumer protection agency, while the
price of rice has spiked by 40 percent since the beginning of the year.
...Mexico imports some 40 percent of its gasoline, most of it from the
United States.
BY ESTABLISHING THE
GREAT ETHANOL FRAUD, THE IDIOTIC BURNING OF PRECIOUS FOOD FOR FUEL, IN
PLACE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF REAL RENEWABLE ENERGY - UNTAPPED, ABUNDANT,
FREE ENERGY THAT WOULD THREATEN CENTRALIZED FOSSIL AND NUCLEAR ENERGY'S
STRANGLEHOLD ON THE WORLD - THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, AT THE BEHEST OF
ITS OIL MASTERS, HAS SET INTO MOTION AN ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL EVIL SO
SOULLESS AND UNCONTROLLABLE THAT IT THREATENS TO DRIVE STRUGGLING HUMANITY
INTO A CHAOS THAT MAY RIVAL OR EXCEED THAT OF THE WORST OF THE
PREVIOUS CENTURY. - RDM When Third World nations do not
have food to export and First World nations are having their crops
destroyed by inclement weather, where does the food come from?
If current trends intensify, the food riots that two dozen countries have
already experienced will move to America.
Heavy Rains Drowning U.S. Crop Production Hopes The Trumpet
Philadelphia Church of God
June 11, 2008
A Third Day of Record Corn Prices Stevenson Jacobs AP/Toronto Star
(Canada) June 9, 2008 Another loser in higher corn costs is ethanol producers, who
are struggling to squeeze out gains as corn's record-setting run outpaces
the price of ethanol, currently at around $2.50 a gallon.
Biofuels Row Holds Up Deal at UN Summit Sapa The Times (South
Africa) June 6, 2008 Biofuels have proved to be
the most contentious issue at the summit, according to delegates . In what
critics would most probably see as ducking the issue, the draft summit
declaration said biofuels presented both “challenges and opportunities” —
and said that more research was needed.
"If government funds become short, subsidies for
fuels will be looked at very carefully.
When they are, there's no way ethanol production can survive."
Tad Patzek,
University of California Berkeley
UC Scientist Says Ethanol UsesMore Energy Than It Makes
Elizabeth Svoboda
San Francisco Chronicle
June 27, 2005
"The fact is we can't grow enough
corn in this country to make a dent in our petroleum dependency." Richard Bond, CEO
Tyson Foods
Ethanol vs. Food Debate Growing Joshua Boak Chicago Tribune (IL)
May 1, 2008 A
recent analysis estimated that government subsidies for ethanol reached as
high as $8.4 billion last year, a sum showing that all stages of ethanol
production and consumption depended on some form of public support rather
than the free market.
Continued expansion of biofuels
production will likely maintain corn and soybean prices at historically
high levels and livestock producers will adjust to the increase in feed
costs by reducing production, leading to higher retail prices for beef and
pork in the longer term.
Oil-Rich States Starve the World Food Program George Russell Fox
News May 9,
2008 The OPEC total amounts to roughly
one minute and 10 seconds worth of the organization’s estimated $674 billion
in annual oil revenues in 2007 — revenues that will be vastly exceeded in 2008
with the continuing spiral in world oil prices. The only other major oil
exporter who made the WFP list of 2008 donors was the United Arab Emirates,
which kicked in $50,000. UAE oil revenues in 2007 were $63 billion. By
contrast, the poverty-stricken African republic of Burkina Faso is listed as
donating more than $600,000, and Bangladesh, perennial home of many of the
world’s hungriest people, is listed as donating nearly $5.8 million.
Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur
on the
Right to Food
"This is silent mass murder.
We have a herd of market
traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and
constructed a world of inequality and horror.
We have to put a stop to this."
(reportedly to the Austrian newspaper, the Kurier am
Sonntag)
SOURCEApril
2008
An informal coalition of
oil refiners, environmentalists and food processors is trying to convince
lawmakers that increased output of the alternative fuel is inflating food costs
by siphoning off corn otherwise fed to livestock and discouraging U.S. farmers
from planting wheat, soybeans and other crops. These strange bedfellows also
argue that ethanol distribution constraints are contributing to higher prices at
the pump, and that the biofuel is unlikely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
and may even increase them. ...Despite
the wave of second-guesses by many lawmakers, most analysts say Congress is
unlikely to alter or drop the ethanol mandate, given the political importance of
farm states in an election year and President Bush's support for the industry.
The top ten ethanol producing states account for half the electoral votes needed
to win the White House, notes Kevin Book, an analyst at Friedman,
Billings Ramsey & Co. Inc.
The latest call for a change of
course came from economist Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who this week urged the European Parliament
to scrap the E.U.'s much-touted target of increasing biofuel's share in
Europe's diesel and gasoline consumption to 10% by 2020.
We are
seeing the specter of August 1792 when the famished people of Paris
stormed and ransacked the Tuileries Palace, an event that was going to
change the world.
...We haven't seen the end of the riots. This is just
the beginning.
President Bush is now concluding that it is necessary
to replace fossil fuel by biofuel which is derived from raw vegetable
materials (biomass). The U.S. launched, at the cost of $6 billion to the
producers, production of ethanol for this purpose.
Last year the U.S burned 138
million tons of corn and hundreds of tons of grain for these very
purposes. In Brazil the culture of cane sugar has expanded immensely at
the detriment of the culture of food products, in spite of the fact that
there are already enormous numbers of undernourished people in the
country. This is also the case for the United States by the way. In the EU
a decree has recently been passed that says that by 2020, in 12 years, 10
% of fuels in the 27 countries of the European Union have to come from
food. There will be scientific progress in this domain though, since it
will be possible in a future to produce ethanol from agricultural waste,
the ears and stems of corn will be burned instead of the food part in
order to produce ethanol. The only problem is that the cost of this
process is much higher than the burning of the entire plant. The heads of the
three international financial organizations, Robert Zoellick of the World
Bank, Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the IMF and Pascal Lamy of the WTO, are
certainly well aware of the catastrophe that is underway, says Jean
Ziegler. All three are convinced that subsistence agriculture must
now receive an absolute priority, convinced of the urgency to radically
change their policies, abandon the programs of structural adjustment and
restrain forced privatization – the neoliberal policies in the world which
amount to a unilateral disarming of the developing countries for the
profit of the multinational corporations and of the rich countries in the
North.
Jean Ziegler seems to believe in the good intentions of the
three men who head the transnational institutions. He says, however, that
there is not much they can accomplish against the enormous power of the
multinational private companies (Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, Bung, etc.)
who, the same as the commodity speculators, have one principal goal – that
is maximum profit, which is what the shareholders are demanding. There is
a balance of power between these institutions, and behind the IMF there
are the private transcontinental companies, the huge banks and financial
groups. Without a total
awareness in our respective countries of the looming catastrophe, this
huge problem of world hunger will not find a solution. We must realize
that this daily massacre of hunger is a crime that we can not tolerate.
The rich people in
the world have to be made aware of this daily massacre that is taking
place right under our eyes, in the third-world countries and even
in the United States. It is
strictly criminal. It is a question of crimes against humanity. The
awareness of having the means to act against these crimes must make us
impose radical change on our governments against the interests of the
transnational institutions. Without these radical changes even the
multinational institutions, says Jean Ziegler, can do nothing.
UN Moves to Head Off Food Riots Laura MacInnis, Eliane Engeler
The Scotsman (UK)
April 30, 2008 The United Nations'
secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, yesterday said he was setting up a task
force to tackle the global food crisis, in an attempt to avert "social
unrest on an unprecedented scale". ...Farmers in the developing
world are not benefiting from the higher prices. They tend to eat most of
what they grow, rather than sell it, and higher prices for fuel and
fertiliser are putting them off growing more, World Bank analysis shows.
Siphoning Off Corn to Fuel Our Cars Steven Mufsa
Washington Post
April 30, 2008 As farmers feed ethanol plants,
a costly link is forged between food and oil.
ASK A KID, THEN ASK AN ETHANOL ADVOCATE,
"WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU BURN YOUR FOOD?"
Food Rationing Strikes the U.S.
Josh Gerstein
New York Sun
April 21, 2008
Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast
are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips
supply.
WALL STREET BIOFUEL PUSHES THE WORLD'S POOR TO THE BRINK
GLOBAL FOOD RIOTS SPREAD Marc Lacey International
Herald Tribune April
17, 2008
In Haiti, where three-quarters of the
population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically
malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of
patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically only consumed by the most
destitute.
"It's salty and it has butter, and you don't know you're
eating dirt," said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more
often in recent months. "It makes your stomach quiet down."
"Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be
starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences
for all their lives." Dominique
Strauss-Kahn
International Monetary Fund Head Warns About Food Prices Harry Dunphy AP
April 12, 2008
Earlier Saturday,
Germany's development minister, who is attending the World Bank's meeting
Sunday, called for greater regulation of the global biofuels market to
prevent its expansion from driving up food prices.
"It is unacceptable for the export of agrofuels to pose a
threat to the supply situation of the very people already living in
poverty," Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said in a statement.
The development group Oxfam, a frequent IMF critic, said rich
countries are largely responsible for the food crisis because they have
been cutting aid to developing countries and encouraging biofuel
production, which the IMF says is responsible for almost half the increase
in the demand for food crops.
"Rich countries' demand for biofuel is driving up food prices
and is a big part of the problem," said Elizabeth Stuart, an Oxfam policy
adviser. "Meanwhile, by cutting aid levels, they are doing precious little
to be part of the solution."
"To grant enormous subsidies
for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible.
There will be nothing left to eat!" Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Nestle
EU Defends Biofuel Goals Amid Food Crises
AFP April
14, 2008
THREE YEARS
AFTER YOU FIRST READ ABOUT IT
HERE, TIME MAGAZINE BARES THE UGLY
TRUTH ABOUT ETHANOL -- IN ITS EUROPEAN EDITION!
IT MAKES YOU WONDER WHAT THE WORLD WOULD BE LIKE IF WE HAD REAL
JOURNALISM. -- RDM
"It's like witnessing a rape."
The Clean Energy Scam Michael Grunwald Time
Magazine (Europe)
March 27, 2008
Ethanol increases global warming,
destroys forests and inflates food prices.
So why are we subsidizing it?
THE GREAT ETHANOL
TAXPAYER FRAUD
"With corn prices well over $5 a bushel, corn ethanol economics have gone
out the window." Michael Jackson, President,
Syntec Biofuel
Corn Hits $6 a Bushel on Tight Supplies Stevenson Jacobs
AP April
3, 2008
Corn is the basic
feedstock for most of the plants and about 20 percent of last year's 13
billion bushel corn crop was consumed by ethanol production. That
percentage is expected to increase to 30 percent for the next crop year,
which ends Aug. 31, 2009, according to Terry Francl, a senior economist
for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
ETHANOL AND BIOFUELS: JUST ANOTHER WAY TO
PAY FOR OIL
GLOBAL STARVATION
HOLOCAUST LOOMS
DUE TO U.S. MANDATE TO BURN FOOD
FOR FUEL
RICE FUTURES JUMP 30%
COUNTRIES STOP
RICE EXPORTS CHAOS APPROACHES
THE GREAT ETHANOL FRAUD SIPHONED
FUNDS AWAY FROM GENUINE RENEWABLE ENERGY SOLUTIONS (THAT THREATENED
OIL PRICES AND CONGRESSIONAL GRAFT)
“I have no idea how importing
countries will get rice.” Chookiat Ophaswongse,
President Thai Rice Exporters Association
Jump in Rice Price Fuels Fears of Unrest Javier Blas and Daniel Ten Kate Financial
Times (UK) March 27, 2008
HAITI: THOUSANDS RAMPAGE OVER
FOOD SHORTAGE
Food Riots Kill At Least Four, Dozens Injured Mayur Pahilajani
AHN April 5, 2008 A young man was reportedly shot in the head by the U.N.
peacekeepers and three others were found dead in Les Cayes during the
clashes as thousands of Haitians went on the rampage, looting stores,
blocking the roads, firing at the U.N. troops and burning cars.
CHINA, INDIA AND VIETNAM CUT RICE
EXPORTS
Rice At Record on High Demand, Export Restrictions Glynys Sim
Bloomberg April 4, 2008 Record grain prices
contributed to strikes in Argentina, riots in Ivory Coast and a
crackdown on illicit exports in Pakistan.
PHILLIPINES: PRESIDENT APPEALS FOR CALM
Nation Asked to Stay Calm Asia Pulse
April 4, 2008 The president made the appeal amid developing
economies' outcry over the oil and food price surges fueled by among
other things the conversion of farm products into biofuels in developed
countries. Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram was quoted by AP as
saying in Singapore last week that the situation was being worsened by
the diversion of food to produce biofuels in some countries. It was
estimated that in the US, for example, nearly 20 percent of the
country's corn production was used to make biofuels, he said.
...According to a UN report, biofuels are not only hurting poor
consumers in Asia by driving up crop prices, they are also failing to
help the region's farmers who have not been able to adapt their
production to cash in on the boom. "Small poor farmers in particular,
have been left behind," UN Conference on Trade and Development economist
Cape Kasahara, was quoted by AFP as saying in Geneva last week. Food
giant Nestle's chief executive Peter Brabeck also said earlier that the
growing use of crops such as wheat and corn to make biofuels is putting
world food supplies in peril.
PHILLIPINES:
TROOPS OVERSEE GRAIN SAILS
The Philippine Rice Crisis Mounts Karen Lema
Globe and Mail (Canada)
April 4, 2008 Soldiers armed with M-16 rifles were keeping the lengthy
line moving, but there was no sign of tension. ...The government has
also said traders caught hoarding grain will be charged with economic
sabotage, which can carry a life sentence in jail.
ERITREA: FOOD RIOTS BEGIN IN
POOR COUNTRIES
Food Prices Soar AP/Eritrea News
April 4, 2008 Clashes over bread in Egypt killed
at least two people last week, and similar food riots broke out in
Burkina Faso and Cameroon this month. But food protests now crop up even
in Italy. ...Rising demand for meat and dairy products in rapidly
developing countries such as China and India is sending up the cost of
grain, used for cattle feed, as is the demand for raw materials to make
biofuels.
THAILAND: RICE STOCKPILES
RUNNING SHORT
Thai Exporters Say Soaring Rice Prices Causing 'Crisis'
Forbes/Thompson Financial News April 4, 2008
"Exporters are facing trouble because
their rice stockpiles are running short, while no more rice is coming to
fill the stocks. Few rice farmers have any stockpiles because most of
them have no silos for storage."
EUROPE:
Europe's Biofuel Road Paved with Potholes Eric Reguly Globe and Mail
(Canada)
April 4, 2008 Europeans, like Americans and
Canadians, are becoming biofuel mad in spite of ample evidence that the
costs to the environment and the taxpayer range from the questionable to
the disastrous.
WORLD BANK: LEADERS MUST
ACT NOW
World Bank President Says Government Leaders Must Act Now to Ease World
Food CrisisAP/IHT
April 2, 2008 "33 countries around the world face potential political
and social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices."
For those countries, where food comprises half to three-quarters of
consumer spending, he said "there is no margin for survival. ...Children
as young as four or five forced to flee the safety of their rural
communities to fight for food in teeming cities; food riots threatening
social breakdown; mothers deprived of nutrition for healthy babies."
UNITED KINGDOM:
SLEEPWALKING INTO A CRISIS
Rising Oil Prices Will Bring Enormous Problems Rosie Boycott
The Guardian (UK) March
28, 2008 ...we are governed by the politics of Tesco -
and that is truly scary.
PHILLIPINES: AMID LOOMING FOOD CRISIS
Solon Wants Biofuels Development Suspended
Norman Bordadora Philippine Daily Inquirer
March 25, 2008 MANILA, Philippines --
Senior Deputy Minority Leader Roilo Golez called on Malacańang on
Tuesday to impose a moratorium on the development of biofuels that would
compete with food production.
"Supporting ethanol and biodiesel is opting to feed gas tanks instead of
hungry stomachs. It is bad policy in the face of the food crisis,"
Golez said in a text message. He urged the authors of the landmark
Biofuels Act to take the lead in pushing for a moratorium on biofuel
development. Quoting the food advocacy think-tank Center for Global Food
Issues, Golez said prices of
commodities such as wheat, soybeans, rice and cotton were rising "as
they're crowded out of field space by biofuel crops." He noted
that China blocked further
expansion of its biofuel program because its food inflation rate rose
18.2 percent. "These are dire warnings.
The government's billion-dollar
and million-hectare biofuel program should be suspended and the
resources realigned to food production," Golez said.
POLITICS OF THE MADHOUSE
Food Shortages Provoke Economic Nationalism Brian Durrant
The Daily Reckoning (UK)
March 25, 2008 If White House efforts to
double ethanol production this year are achieved, in due course around
40% of the corn crop will end up in petrol tanks. This is an unnecessary
market distortion. It is old-fashioned government support of agriculture
masquerading as a policy to increase energy security and reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. The net result is a relative scarcity of food
and higher prices. Indeed, the UN agency responsible for relieving
hunger is drawing up plans to ration food aid in response to the
spiralling costs of agricultural commodities.
John Beddington, the government's
current chief scientific adviser, has already expressed scepticism about
biofuels. At a speech in Westminster this month he said demand for
biofuels from the US had delivered a "major shock" to world agriculture,
which was raising food prices globally. "There are real problems with the
unsustainability of biofuels," he said, adding that cutting down
rainforest to grow the crops was "profoundly stupid".
Higher prices are not meeting any
resistance from desperate buyers. Most unusual about this phenomenon,
according to BMO Financial Group strategist Don Coxe, is that until now,
food crises in world history were regional concerns that arose from crop
failures, war or pests. Once global trade of grains got going in the 19th
century in a major way, food shortages in one country were ameliorated by
imports, he said. What's happening now is a lack of supply everywhere at
once. ...Coxe's solution: As a
first step, shut down all ethanol plants immediately. more
FOOD, CRUDE ESCALATE
AS
DOLLAR IMPLODES Richard D. Masters, ICHC
March 15, 2008
AMERICA IS NOW TASTING THE BITTER
FRUIT OF A PERPETUAL OIL WAR, A POLITICAL WAR WAGED AGAINST RENEWABLE ENERGY AND A FANTASTIC,
RIDICULOUS FRAUD ON TAXPAYERS INVOLVING ZERO-NET-ENERGY-GAIN CORN ETHANOL CONCOCTED BY
SO-CALLED "LEADERS" FROM BOTH PARTIES.
VIRTUALLY EVERY ENERGY SCHEME FOISTED UPON AMERICANS TO THIS POINT HAS
SIMPLY REWARDED THE GREED OF BIG ENERGY LOBBYISTS AND A TRAITOROUS CONGRESS
FOR SALE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER, WHILE ACCOMPLISHING NOTHING. OUR
SHAMEFULLY IGNORANT CITIZENS HAVE WILLINGLY ALLOWED THEMSELVES TO BE
FLEECED DAY AFTER DAY, MONTH AFTER MONTH, YEAR AFTER YEAR BY
ADMINISTRATIONS, BOTH REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRAT, OWNED BY BIG OIL, COAL,
AGRICULTURE AND NUCLEAR POWER.
NOW WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY FLEEING AMERICA'S SHORES -- AS COMPANIES AMERICA
POURED BILLIONS OF TAX DOLLARS INTO TO DEVELOP ALTERNATIVES TO THE FOSSIL
ECONOMY ARE BEING SNAPPED UP BY FOREIGN ENTITIES THAT UNDERSTAND THE DEBACLE
THAT IS COMING -- OUR CLUELESS, FOOLISH CITIZENS ARE CALLING FOR
CHEAPER GAS TO POWER THEIR GIANT, WASTEFUL VEHICLES WHILE THEIR MONEY
CONTINUES TO FEED TERROR AND THEY SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO BATTLE IN BIG
ENERGY'S GLOBAL RESOURCE WARS.
IN THE WINGS, BIG OIL, COAL AND NUCLEAR
ARE CHEERING, KNOWING THEY HAVE STOPPED SUSTAINABILITY BY CRIPPLING THE
EXPANSION OF SOLAR, WIND, GEOTHERMAL AND WAVE POWER IN THE SENATE THROUGH
THEIR PROXY JOHN MCCAIN AND THE REPUBLICAN MINORITY. AND THEY FULLY
EXPECT TO SOON BE CALLED UPON TO PROVIDE COSTLY, WASTEFUL, EXTRAVAGANT
AND DANGEROUS SOLUTIONS THEY CANNOT POSSIBLY DELIVER BUT WILL BE WELL PAID
BY CONGRESS TO ATTEMPT.
THE
PAIN IS JUST BEGINNING, MY FELLOW SUFFERERS. IT'S GOING TO GET WORSE.
IT'S GOING TO BE HORRIBLE. MANY WILL LOSE EVERYTHING. I'M TRYING TO
GARNER SYMPATHY...
BUT AS FOOD PRICES SKYROCKET DUE TO THE IDIOTIC
CONGRESSIONAL SCHEME TO BURN PRECIOUS FOOD FOR FUEL, HATRED IS BUILDING
AMONGST THE WORLD'S POOR AGAINST AMERICA FOR PUSHING THEM TO THE BRINK OF
STARVATION. AND ELSEWHERE OUR YEARS OF OIL IMPERIALISM ARE BREEDING
BITTER HATRED AND REVENGE. EVERYTHING WE HAVE EVER DONE TO SHOW THE
WORLD THAT AMERICA AND DEMOCRACY IS THE PATHWAY TO HUMAN SALVATION IS BEING
THROWN AWAY IN THE CORPORATE RACE TO SEIZE THE WORLD'S DIMINISHING ENERGY RESOIURCES. YET,
STANFORD'S JACOBSON HAS SHOWN THAT WIND ALONE COULD PROVIDE FIVE TIMES AGAIN
THE ENERGY AMERICA NOW USES. HOW COULD WE BE SO UTTERLY STUPID TO THROW AWAY
200 YEARS OF PROGRESS FOR THIS?
FOR
NOTHING? FOR LESS THAN NOTHING?
WE ARE NOT
CORPORATIONS, YOU AND I. WE ARE NOT CHARTERED TO CREATE PROFIT FOR OUR
SHAREHOLDERS REGARDLESS OF EXTERNAL CONSEQUENCES. WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS. WE
HAVE CHILDREN. WE REQUIRE SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS SO THAT
THIS MAY CONTINUE. SUSTAINABILITY SIMPLY MEANS THAT YOUR FAMILY HAS A
FUTURE. WE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY DURING THE CLINTON AND BUSH YEARS, TO
DEVELOP SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS. WE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO SHOW THE WORLD THE
NEXT STEP TOWARD SELF-SUFFICIENCY, HEALTH, INDEPENDENCE, GREEN DOMESTIC
JOBS, DOMESTIC FUEL AND POWER, AND THE CHANCE FOR REAL DEMOCRACY, BASED ON
DIMINISHED CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY, TO SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
WE HAVE ALLOWED THIS TO
BE LOST. WE THREW IT AWAY. FOR THIS, WE WILL SUFFER.
THIS NEW, REPUGNANT
AMERICAN BUSINESS LANDSCAPE, DOMINATED BY SOULLESS ENERGY CORPORATIONS WITH INFINITE PROPOGANDA
BUDGETS AND A RAPACIOUS, AMORAL APPETITE FOR THE WORLD'S REMAINING ENERGY RESOURCES,
SEEMS TO VIEW HUMANITY ITSELF AS EXPENDABLE FOR PROFIT.
WHERE
DID THIS NEW AMERICA COME FROM? THIS IS NOT THE AMERICA I KNEW.
SOMETIMES, IN DISPAIR, I READ THESE PAGES, BACK OVER THE DECADE, AGAIN AND
AGAIN. I TELL MYSELF THAT, AT LEAST, I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE.
GOD HELP THOSE WHO ARE. FOR HISTORY SHOWS THAT THINGS
CAN GO VERY, VERY WRONG, VERY QUICKLY, WHEN PEOPLE ALLOW THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS TO RUN
AMOK.
Bakers on Ethanol: Stop Burning Up Our Food Supply! Boyd Huppert
KARE 11 TV (MN)
March 13, 2008
Last year a six week supply of flour
cost the Cold Spring Bakery about $5500. The same semi truck load today
costs more than $16,000.
America's Bakers March on Washington Alan Caruba
The American Daily
March 11, 2008
Ethanol is the single greatest scam
perpetrated on Americans in modern memory. It literally burns food to
provide a gasoline additive that drives up the cost of a gallon while
reducing its mileage. The consumer is robbed in two ways at the pump. The
energy bill recently passed by Congress increased the amount of ethanol to
be used.
THE DEATH KNELL SOUNDS
FOR BLOATED ETHANOL SUBSIDIES Richard D. Masters, ICHC
March 4, 2008
Last week, I was discussing ethanol
with a California Farmer from the Central Valley, trying unsuccessfully to
find a sliver of guilt for spiraling food prices.
I should have known better.
"We all love those corn prices!" he said. "We'll plant all we
can sell."
"Yeah? How many of you are running your equipment on
ethanol?"
"No one."
"Nobody? Not one?"
"Not one," he replied. "You can't get any power out of it!"
Of course, I knew he'd say that. Farmers aren't stupid. They
all knew the ethanol fuel debacle has been a fraud all along but they were
sure the
last folks that were going to complain about it.
In 2005, looking at the 52.5 cent government give-away
subsidy for ethanol that made it appear competitive to an uncritical
public, academic cynic Tad Patzek prophesied, "If government funds become short, subsidies for
fuels will be looked at very carefully. When they are, there's no way ethanol production can survive."
[UC Scientist Says Ethanol UsesMore Energy Than It Makes
Elizabeth Svoboda,
San Francisco Chronicle,
June 27, 2005]
Now the news has just come over the wires from Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher that the Fed is going to
act to stem inflation "however politically inconvenient."
[Emphasis mine.]
The writing is on the wall.
Institute of Transport Studies Review
January 24, 2008
The University of California at Berkeley’s Transportation
Sustainability Research Center told the California Air Resources Board
that ethanol could be twice as
bad as gasoline, from a carbon-emissions point of view. How?
Basically by turning land now covered with trees, grass, and other
natural "carbon sinks" into farmland for corn and other crops used for
ethanol. (Ethanol's dirty secret has also recently been explored by
Science and other magazines.)
"Simply said, ethanol production today using U.S. corn
contributes to the conversion of grasslands and rainforest to
agriculture, causing very large
GHG emissions," wrote Berkeley profs Alex Farrell and Michael
O'Hare in a January 12 memo to California regulators. "Even if only a
small fraction of the emissions calculated in this crude way [through
land use change] are added to estimates of direct emissions for corn
ethanol, total emissions for
corn ethanol are higher than for fossil fuels."—Wall
Street Journal Energy Roundup Blog
$140 a Barrel!! Commentary by Richard D. Masters
"Oh, do it again!
I love it!
I love it!"
SO IT GOES. AMERICA FOLLOWS ITS
SO-CALLED "LEADERS" LIKE LEMMINGS LEAPING OFF A CLIFF, WILLING TO ACCEPT
ANYTHING, IT SEEMS, TO AVOID RENEWABLE WIND, GEOTHERMAL, WAVE AND
SOLAR ENERGY -- THE CHEAP BUT GENUINE SOLUTIONS THAT THREATEN RAPACIOUS
FOSSIL ENERGY PROFITS. THIS WAS CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED BY THE WILLING FAILURE OF
THE FAUX SENATE, THE MAJORITY OF WHOM REPRESENT THE INTERESTS OF OIL
COMPANIES, TO HELP LEVEL THE RIGGED PLAYING FIELD FOR ENTRY OF OUR
STRUGGLING RENEWABLE ENERGY COMPANIES BY SIMPLY EXTENDING THE PRODUCTION TAX
CREDIT FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF GREEN ENERGY.
BECAUSE OF REDUCED
EXTERNAL COSTS, IT WOULD HAVE COST THEM
NOTHING TO TAKE THIS SIMPLE STEP TOWARD FREEING AMERICA FROM THE SHACKLES OF
MIDDLE EAST OIL DEPENDENCE, FROM OPEC, FROM SPIRALING FOOD PRICES, FROM
SACRIFICING OUR SONS AND OUR DAUGHTERS DYING BY THE THOUSANDS IN FOREIGN
LANDS FOR WHAT WILL TURN OUT TO BE LESS THAN NOTHING, TO STOP THE ASTHMA
EPIDEMIC IN OUR YOUNG CHILDREN, TO STOP THE MERCURY POISONING OF THE
NORTHEAST, TO FORESTALL THE HORRIBLE BURDEN OF UNSECURED RADIOACTIVITY ON
OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS. BUT EVEN THE "ARIZONA IS THE SOLAR STATE" HYPOCRITE JOHN MCCAIN, ONE OF MANY, WOULDN'T
GET OUT OF BED, WOULDN'T LIFT A FINGER WHEN HE COULD HAVE CHANGED THE COURSE
OF HISTORY. NOW NEW HAMPSHIRE CROWNS HIM THE REPUBLICAN FRONTRUNNER. NEVER HAS THERE BEEN A PEOPLE AS STUPID AS
THIS. GOD HELP US ALL OR GOD DAMN YOU ALL. I DON'T KNOW WHICH. PROBABLY
BOTH.
IMPLEMENTING THESE NEW TECHNOLOGIES TO GATHER ABUNDANT FREE
CLEAN NATURAL ENERGY WOULD HAVE BEEN A WORTHY CHALLENGE FOR THE LONG LOST AMERICA I GREW
UP IN. THE REASONS TO DO SO NOW ARE MYRIAD, RATIONAL AND URGENT. WE
PUT MEN ON THE MOON TO MEET OUR DREAMS. WE DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. WE MADE A
LEGEND THAT WILL LINGER ON THE LIPS OF HUMAN HISTORY UNTIL THE END OF TIME.
BUT TODAY WE
PUT MEN IN IRAQ TO MEET OIL PRODUCTION.
WHY?
ALL THE STUDIES SHOW TEN TIMES THE EMPLOYMENT
WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY. NO MORE MONEY DRAINING FROM OUR COUNTRY TO THE MIDDLE
EAST. THE END OF UNBEARABLE HEALTH COSTS FROM THE EFFECTS OF FOSSIL
POLLUTION. A HUGE ECONOMIC BOOM FROM THE GROWTH OF NEW, CLEAN ENERGY
TECHNOLOGIES. MORE POWER THAN WE COULD EVER DREAM OF USING. INFINITE POWER.
NO DEPLETION. FREEDOM FROM FEAR. FREEDOM FROM FOOLS.
WHY HAVEN'T WE MOVED IN THIS DIRECTION?
WE HAVE LOST SIGHT OF COMMON SENSE!
WORSE, WE HAVE LOST SIGHT OF GOOD AND EVIL. THE
VERY WORST EXAMPLE, OUR REPRESENTATIVES CYNICALLY CHOOSING TO FOREGO TRUE
RENEWABLES AND LINK THE PRICE OF OIL TO FOOD WITH CORN ALCOHOL AND
BIOFUELS WHEN MILLIONS ARE HUNGRY, SEEMS TO HOLD NO MORAL
COMPUNCTION TO THESE VICIOUS, STUPID, SOULLESS CREATURES FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE
AISLE. SOON THEY WILL BLAME YOU FOR THIS DISASTER.
AND NOW, AS THEY PREPARE TO SEND YET ANOTHER GENERATION
OF OUR CHILDREN TO FIGHT FOREIGN OIL WARS FOR INTERNATIONAL CORPORATIONS, PEOPLE
OFTEN ASK ME, WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP IT?
TO CHANGE IT? TO TURN IT AROUND?
THESE ARE THE SAME PEOPLE WHO DROWNED OUT THE
VOICES OF REASON, WHO SHOUTED DOWN THOSE WHO CRIED, "IF YOU TURN FOOD INTO
GASOLINE, WHAT WILL WE EAT?"
WHAT CAN WE TELL THEM NOW?
ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
IF DEMOCRACY ACTUALLY WORKS AS ADVERTISED, THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE AND EASY. STOP ELECTING
PEOPLE TO OFFICE WHO ARE BEHOLDEN TO GIANT FOSSIL, NUCLEAR AND AGRICULTURAL
CORPORATIONS. DEMAND REAL CANDIDATES, REAL CHOICES. REAL
SOLUTIONS.
DEMAND CHEAP, FREE, CLEAN, DOMESTIC RENEWABLE ENERGY TO
END THE OIL WARS FOREVER.
OTHERWISE, NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE.
ON THE OTHER HAND, IF DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN LOST,
IF OUR REPUBLIC IS A FRAUD AND HAS BECOME BUT A DIM SWORD TO ENFORCE THE WILL OF
INTERNATIONAL FOSSIL ENERGY CORPORATIONS AND THEIR MILITARY COHORTS, THE SOLUTION
TO OUR SUDDEN DILEMMA, IF EVEN ACHIEVABLE, BECOMES
DIFFICULT AND UGLY.
IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT A PEOPLE DESERVE THE GOVERNMENT THEY
CREATE. NOW AS THE DEMOCRATS WAIT IN THE WINGS, SALIVATING LIKE PAVLOV'S
DOGS FOR THEIR CHANCE AT THE OIL MONEY THE REPUBLICANS HAVE FUMBLED, I HAVE COME TO THE SAD AND BITTER CONCLUSION THAT THIS IS TRUE.
I WAS A REPUBLICAN. I WAS AN OBJECTIVIST. BUT NOW
I AM ONLY ASHAMED.
IF GOD IS JUST, PREPARE TO SUFFER. FOR THE POOR ARE
MORE THAN THE FIRST WORLD'S CALLOUSLY ORPHANED CHILDREN, SO CRUELLY TORN FROM
THE LIVES THEY DESERVE -- THE LIVES THEY COULD SO EASILY HAVE HAD IF THOSE
WITH WEALTH AND ABILITY AND KNOWLEDGE HAD CONSCIENCE. THE WORLD'S POOR ARE
INSTEAD PITIFUL, HELPLESS, CAGED CANARIES, ABANDONED DEEP, DEEP DOWN IN THE
DARKNESS OF PLANET EARTH'S FOUL COAL MINE WHILE THE OTHERS SEIZE THEIR FOOD
TO CIRCLE THE MALLS IN GIANT STEEL MACHINES.
FIRST THEM.
THEN YOU.
THE WAR FOR OIL & THE WAR TO BURN THE
POOR'S FOOD FOR
FUEL
"Why
have you stopped sending food?" THE GREAT ETHANOL
FRAUD There are people in
the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of
bread.
-- Ghandi
A new crisis is emerging, a
global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than
anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the
reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in
comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio
strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual
investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday. ...Mr. Coxe warned
U.S. corn exports were in danger of seizing up in about three years if the
country continues to subsidize ethanol production. Biofuels are expected
to eat up about a third of America's grain harvest in 2007. more
Clouds Hover in Ethanol Sky Gargi Chakrabarty
Rocky Mountain News
December 22, 2007
David Pimentel, a professor at Cornell
University, is among the critics who say that production of one gallon of
ethanol uses more than a thousand gallons of water and that the fuel has a
negative energy balance.
THE GREAT ETHANOL FRAUD
DRIVES WORLD HUNGER
Biofuels Bonanza Facing 'Crash' Roger Harrabin
BBC
November 15, 2007 Critics say biofuels will lead to
food shortages and destroy rainforests. They point to the destruction of
Indonesia's peat swamps as an example of biofuel folly. The swamps are one the
richest stores of carbon on the planet and they are being burned to produce palm
oil.
Pasta Panic Strikes Italy Peter Gumbel
Fortune
November 15, 2007
The story behind the price hike is a
global saga involving agricultural policies, commodity-market speculation, the
growing use of ethanol as an alternative fuel, and Australian drought.
Guatemala: Corn Prices Raise the Specter of Hunger Louisa Reynolds
Latin America Press (Peru) November
15, 2007
a growing appetite for corn-based biofuel
in the US has pushed up the price of corn on the international market, raising
the specter of
a serious food crisis in Guatemala.
A Shortage of Beer? Justin Foss
KCRG-TV (IA)
November 14, 2007 After years of profit-killing surplus,
farmers across the world starting growing other crops, like corn. The fix will
take years because hops come on vines which take time to grow.
Sowing the Seeds of Farming's Future Les FirbankBBC (UK)
November 13, 2007
Global food stocks are running low. There
are three main reasons: increasing use of crops for bio-energy, especially in
the US...
Corn Ethanol: The New Snake Oil
Mother Jones
Nov/Dec 2007
Mauritanian Food Riots
AFP November
9, 2007
Authorities have largely blamed
the recent price hikes on soaring oil prices.
Palm Oil plantation in Indonesia.
Fires in background.
Carbon hotspots were
detected using satellite imagery of forest fires with maps, which
indicated the locations of the densest carbon stores in Indonesia. Riau,
on the island of Sumatra was revealed as a particular concern, where a
quarter of Indonesia plantations are located.
The area of peatland here is only four million hectares -
about the size of Switzerland. Yet the report says it stores 14.6bn tones
of carbon. If these peatlands were destroyed, the resulting GHG emissions
would be the equivalent of one year's total global emissions.
Indonesia has apparently destroyed over 28m hectares of
forest since 1990, largely for the creation of plantations. The report
cites UN figures that predict palm oil production will double, from its
present 20.2m tones a year to 40m tones by 2030, and to triple by 2050.
Empty shelves in Caracas. Food riots
in West Bengal and Mexico. Warnings of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the
Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa. Soaring prices for basic foods are
beginning to lead to political instability, with governments being forced
to step in to artificially control the cost of bread, maize, rice and
dairy products. Record world prices for most staple foods have led to 18%
food price inflation in China, 13% in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10% or
more in Latin America, Russia and India, according to the UN Food and
Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Wheat has doubled in price, maize is
nearly 50% higher than a year ago and rice is 20% more expensive, says the
UN. ...India, Yemen, Mexico, Burkina Faso and several other
countries have had, or been close to, food riots in the last year,
something not seen in decades of low global food commodity prices.
Meanwhile, there are shortages of beef, chicken and milk in Venezuela and
other countries as governments try to keep a lid on food price inflation.
..."The use of food as a source of fuel may have serious implications for
the demand for food if the expansion of biofuels continues," said a
spokesman for the International Monetary Fund last week.
Bio-Fuelling Poverty Why the EU renewable-fuel target may be disastrous for
poor people
Oxfam International
November 2007
The clearance of critical ecosystems,
such as rainforests, to make way for biofuel plantations has rightly
raised serious concerns from an environmental perspective. But millions of
people also face displacement from their land as the scramble to supply
intensifies. Those most at risk are some of the poorest and most
marginalised in the world. The chair of the UN Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues recently warned that 60 million indigenous people
worldwide face clearance from their land to make way for biofuel
plantations. Five million of these are in the Indonesian region of West
Kalimantan. In Colombia paramilitary groups are forcing people from their
land at gunpoint, torturing and murdering those that resist, in order to
plant oil palms, often for biofuels, contributing to one of the worst
refugee crises in the world. Many of these violent acts occur in the
traditional territories of indigenous peoples and afrodescendent
communities, directly affecting the most vulnerable groups in the country.
In Tanzania, reports are already emerging that vulnerable groups are being
forced aside to make way for biofuel plantations.
Once people lose their land, they lose their livelihoods.
Many will end up in slums in search of work, others will fall into
migratory labour patterns, some will be forced to take jobs – often in
precarious conditions – on the very plantations which displaced them.
....Perhaps more of a threat than rising food prices is
increasing price volatility, as poor people, who may spend upwards of 50
per cent of their income on food, are less able to adapt to shocks. As
demand for biofuels grows, food and oil prices are becoming more closely
linked. This will result in increasing fluctuations in food prices as
volatility is transmitted from energy to food markets.
THE GREAT ETHANOL
FRAUD STRIKES MEAT
Corn-Derived Ethanol Shares Blame for Food Price Hikes Greg Flakus
Voice of America
October 16, 2007 Soaring Corn Prices Hit US Cattle Farmers AFP/Google
September 25, 2007
National cattle, pork and poultry
groups are advocating an energy policy that puts an end to ethanol
supports.
IDIOTS IN CONGRESS CALL FOR
MORE ETHANOL
Ethanol Runs Out of Gas When You Tote Up True Cost Mark J. Perry, professor of
finance and economics at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan
Houston Chroncle (TX)
September 23, 2007
In the politically motivated rush to
replace gasoline with corn ethanol, we may be doing ourselves real
economic harm. The government-supported push for ethanol will not only
increase taxes and damage the environment, but will add to Americans'
burden of high fuel and food costs and especially hurt people on fixed
incomes. And it will do almost nothing to reduce dependence on foreign oil
— all of the ethanol production this year will replace less than 5 percent
of the gasoline sold.
THE GREAT ETHANOL FRAUD SPURS INFLATION
AMERICANS PAY DAILY FOR THIS SWINDLE INSTEAD OF INVESTING IN TRUE
RENEWABLE
ENERGY SOLUTIONS.
LITTLE OUTRAGE OR UNDERSTANDING IS EVIDENT.
- RDM "Thanks for the big bucks, suckers!"
"They cite inflation?
I happen to believe the war has clouded
a lot of people's sense of optimism." U.S. President George W. Bush
Chief Architect of the Great Ethanol Fraud
Prices for Key Foods Are Rising Sharply Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers
August 14, 2007
The Labor Department's most recent
inflation data showed that U.S. food prices rose by 4.2 percent for the 12
months ending in July, but a deeper look at the numbers reveals that the
price of milk, eggs and other essentials in the American diet are actually
rising by double digits. ...Why are food prices rising? It's partly
because of corn prices, driven up by congressional mandates for ethanol
production, which have reduced the amount of corn available for animal
feed.
“The worst thing is, we are doing it for no good reason.
It’s of no benefit to anyone in this country. Nobody gains, nobody.” Berkeley engineering professor Tad Patzek
LBL’s Switch
to Ethanol Fuels Controversy
Berkeley Daily Planet
Patzek thinks lawmakers and environmental activists need to push ethanol aside and
concentrate on more sustainable solutions like improving the efficiency of fuel cells and
hybrid electric cars or harnessing solar energy for use in transport. If they don't, he
predicts economics will eventually force the issue.
"If government funds become short, subsidies for fuels will be
looked at very carefully," he said. "When they are, there's no way ethanol
production can survive."
more
AMERICA'S
HISTORIC EMERGENCY FOOD SUPPLY SACRIFICED TO THE GREAT ETHANOL FRAUD An editorial by Richard D. Masters International
Clearinghouse for Hydrogen Commerce August 3, 2007
For generations of
North Americans, the great grain elevators and silos of the Midwest have
served as an emergency food supply for both the United States and Canada.
But now, as grain is trucked directly from the farm to the bubbling ethanol plants,
an increasing number of these
bastions against disaster or famine stand empty, steadily disappearing from the
landscape, victims of the cynical and pointless Great Ethanol Fraud.
It is
the largest congressional raid on taxpayer funds in history, a giveaway
program to the Farm States, Big Agriculture and, more cunningly, to Big
Energy, disguised and described in glowing terms by their useful idiots in the U.S.
Congress as "renewable" energy when it is really nothing but a
shell game.
How a practical and sensible people, who would have
considered such a perilous development unthinkable in the 1960s, could
allow it to pass almost unnoticed today speaks poorly for both the
leaders and the people themselves. Somewhere in the mad rush for corporate
profit, in the traitorous selling of congressional influence and in the
incomprehensible toleration of this by citizens, the age-old message of
Aesop's fable of
The Ant and the Grasshopper has been lost.
In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping
about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed
by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to
the nest.
"Why not come and chat with me," said the
Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"
"I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said
the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."
"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper;
we have got plenty of food at present." But the Ant went on its way
and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no
food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants
distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had
collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew:
It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.
Sadly, the
vast sums of money wasted on corn ethanol subsidies, industrial plants,
coal plants, trucking fleets, fertilizer, gasoline, diesel and natural gas
could have been well-spent on the vital expansion of true renewable energy --
wind, solar, hydro, wave, geothermal - but many of these programs were cut
or allowed to stagnate by the oilmen in the Executive Branch, ensuring
dangerous, continuing U.S. dependence on crude, coal, and soon, more nuclear power.
But aside from (surprisingly) ExxonMobil, Big Energy never
complained about ethanol because they knew it required more energy to make -- from
natural gas or, increasingly, coal-fired boilers -- than anyone
could ever get out of it. It was, in effect, a new and lucrative
taxpayer-subsidized market, handed
to them on a silver platter. But now the Great
Ethanol Fraud is spiraling out of control. New and disastrous
ramifications are daily becoming more apparent. Even as seemingly
dull Americans slowly come to the realization that they have gained nothing by
burning their food as fuel, all across the equatorial regions of the
Earth, vast palm
oil plantations driven by the phony economics of biofuels are guaranteeing
the extinction of the orangutan and thousands of other animal and plant
species, sacrificed to feed this artificially-created First World market.
People in poor nations are now watching, with rising anger, the price of grain, their
primary staple, climb beyond their reach. World hunger is rising as food
supplies are diverted to power First World vehicles.
Where is our compassion?
Where is our common sense?
Where is our pride?
After defeating the fascists to the east and the imperialists
to the west, after defeating the communists without another world war and
freeing the Eastern Bloc,
after demonstrating the true promise, hope and synergy of capitalism,
after generously providing modern medicine and agriculture, education and technology
throughout the world, after sharing her largess with the hungry and
destitute and
offering so much of substance to the building of a better world, America has suddenly
-- almost instantaneously -- turned her
back on people, on nature, on the future.
For what? I fear that all the
vast good
America has done, all the global goodwill America has so painstakingly earned
throughout my lifetime, and even my father's lifetime, is being thrown
away in a single, unbelievably senseless act of corporate and
congressional greed. And
this, too, shall have consequences. Just as the pursuit of oil in the face
of limitless renewable energy promises endless resource wars and rivers of
blood, the gathering of the Third World's food to burn as fuel for the
First World is a new, unjustified and immoral war upon the poor.
This is not the America I knew.
Ohio's Grain Elevators on the Wane
Toledo Blade (OH) July 5, 2007 In Ohio, ethanol production from corn is the most
significant short-term challenge facing grain elevators, said Bob Linkhorn, president of Limaco in Urbana, which works with dozens of
grain elevators in Ohio and Indiana. He said
many ethanol plants are
buying corn directly from farmers rather than through grain elevators.
The Effect of Ethanol on Grain Transportation and StorageFrank Dooley, Department of
Agricultural Economics Perdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana Some elevators
located within a 50 miles radius of ethanol plants will close...
Most corn is shipped by truck from the farm to either a nearby elevator
or a local corn processor. The draw area for a grain elevator can be up
to 25 miles, although most corn is probably collected from farms located
within 10 miles of the elevator. The capacity of an ethanol plant is
much larger than that of most grain elevators, meaning that the draw
area of the plant will be much larger, perhaps as large as 75 miles.
Thus, a shift to ethanol production will appreciably increase local
trucking, as corn bypasses local grain elevators and is hauled by truck
to ethanol plants.
How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer
Foreign AffairsMay/June 2007 Washington's fixation on
corn-based ethanol has distorted the national agenda and diverted its
attention from developing a broad and balanced strategy. ...But
if, all other things being equal, the prices of staple foods increased
because of demand for biofuels, as the IFPRI [International Food Policy
Research Institute] projections suggest they will,
the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by over 16
million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple
foods. That means that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by
2025 -- 600 million more than previously predicted. The world's
poorest people already spend 50 to 80 percent of their total household
income on food. For the many among them who are landless laborers or
rural subsistence farmers, large increases in the prices of staple foods
will mean malnutrition and hunger. Some of them will tumble over the
edge of subsistence into outright starvation, and
many more will die from a
multitude of hunger-related diseases.
The Great Biofuel Fraud
Asia Times Aug 1 2007 F. William Engdahl, author of
A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics The same cast of
characters who brought the world the Iraq war, and who cry about the
"problem of world overpopulation", are now backing conversion of global
grain production to burn as fuel at a time of declining global grain
reserves. That alone should give pause for thought.
"ETHANOL IS A TAX
ON THE POOR." Jim Cramer
CNBC March 22, 2007
Corn Biofuel 'Dangerously Oversold'
as Green Energy Phil McKenna
New Scientist
July 18, 2007 The report concludes that the
rapidly growing and heavily subsidised corn ethanol industry in the US
will cause significant environmental damage without significantly reducing
the country's dependence on fossil fuels.
The
Rush to Ethanol Food & Water Watch and Network for New Energy Choices, Institute
for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School Corn — now used to produce
95 percent of U.S. ethanol — is the least sustainable biofuel feedstock
of all the raw materials commonly used.
There are people in
the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of
bread. -- Ghandi
THE GREAT ETHANOL
FRAUD
STARVATION NEARS
Commentary by Richard D. Masters
International Clearinghouse for Hydrogen Commerce
June 14, 2007
"Put a child in your tank!"
Cars don't need food.
People do.
The Great Ethanol Fraud, a cynical, unworkable scheme concocted by the
Bush Administration with imbecilic congressional complicity to seize
taxpayer funds in the name of renewable energy from food, is bearing its
bitter fruit for the Third World. Now that even the leaders of the Big
Agriculture companies are beginning to lose their moral resolve in the
face of burgeoning food prices in poor countries, we can soon expect that
the inevitable "compassionate U.S. humanitarian aid" will be added to the
cost of this immense fraud on taxpayers -- stratospheric levels of
subsidies, increased fossil fuel use, increased coal pollution, wholesale
environmental destruction of the tropics (resulting in an increased carbon
dioxide burden), river and ocean pollution, decreased grain export and
food aid, rising grocery costs across America, global political upheaval
(looming food riots), loss of crop diversity and loss of indigenous
homelands (human rights abuse) - and you get the most expensive, stupid
and harmful giveaway program in history.
Scientists' warnings were ignored.
National Laboratory reports were manipulated.
But the bad news is only the tip of a melting iceberg....
"It is a
catastrophe." Jean Ziegler, UN Food Envoy
Biofuels Could Lead to Mass Hunger Deaths: U.N. Envoy Stephanie Nebehay Reuters
Jun 17, 2007
Diverting sugar and maize for
biofuels could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths from hunger
worldwide, the United Nations’ food envoy warned on Thursday. Jean
Ziegler, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, accused the
European Union (EU), Japan and the United States of “total hypocrisy” for
promoting biofuels to cut their own dependency on imported oil.
ABC IS ONLY A YEAR
BEHIND HYDROGENCOMMERCE.COM
IN UNVEILING THE GREATEST FRAUD AMD GIVEAWAY EVER FOISTED UPON THE
GULLIBLE AMERICAN TAXPAYER
"It may well be that what we're learning is the widespread use of corn for
ethanol may not be in the best public interest." Tom Spreen, an economics
professor at the University of Florida
How More Ethanol Means Pricier Pizza ABC News
June 27, 2007
We are very concerned
that biofuel expansion is accelerating climate change through
deforestation, ecosystem destruction, peat drainage, soil organic carbon
losses, and the wider effects of increased nitrate fertilization. We do
not believe that life-cycle greenhouse gas assessments, which look at the
micro-level only, can capture those wider impacts. Even at the
micro-level, there is little scientific consensus, and there are large
uncertainties. We are concerned
that biofuel strategies are being developed without any proper risk
analysis having been done: The impacts from the ‘worst case scenarios’
such as the complete destruction of South-east Asia’s peatlands, or the
irreversible die-back of the Amazon forest are of such magnitude that they
clearly are not ‘risks worth taking’. We fear that policies are being
developed based on micro-studies, whilst the wider impacts on the global
climate and on ecosystem have been ignored and risks of potentially
catastrophic impacts, however high or low the probabilities might be, have
not been looked at. In the absence
of proven safeguards which would address not just immediate impacts of
biofuel production, but the wider macros/displacement impacts, too, we
believe that the risks of promoting large-scale biofuel expansion based on
monocultures remain unacceptably high.
OREGON WAKES UP TO THE
ETHANOL FRAUD
Economists Caution Oregon on High Cost of Biofuel
RenewableEnergyAccess.com
February 2, 2007
The economists examined three biofuel
options for Oregon: ethanol made from corn, ethanol made from wood cellulose,
and biodiesel made from canola. ...Ethanol made from corn netted a mere 20
percent of its energy after subtracting the energy spent to produce it. ...Based
on their analysis, the authors concluded that these three biofuel options appear
to be a costly way to achieve limited progress toward energy independence or
reduce greenhouse emissions in Oregon.
Biofuel Potential in Oregon: Background and Evaluation of Options William K. Jaeger, Robin Cross, & Thorsten M. Egelkraut
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Oregon State University January 29, 2007
AMERICA'S ETHANOL DISASTER
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE THWARTED BY BIOFUELS SCAM.
SOLAR, WIND AND REAL SOLUTIONS PUSHED ASIDE TO DIVERT VITAL RENEWABLE
ENERGY FUNDING TO BIG AGRICULTURE. COAL AND NUCLEAR AS
GIVEAWAY PROGRAMS. OIL USE UNCHANGED. -- RDM
Bush Claims Ethanol Is Answer To Oil Addiction
The Ecologist January 24, 2007
[E]thanol currently costs more to produce than it
sells for on the open market. The difference is subsidized by the American
tax payer.
Ethanol Demand Threatens Food Prices Britanny Sauser
Technology Review
February 13, 2007
The situation will only get worse, says David
Pimentel, a professor in the department of entomology at Cornell
University. "We have over a hundred different ethanol plants under
construction now, so the situation is going to get desperate," he says.
Corn: Fuel or Food? In the competition for corn, ethanol producers may be
gaining ground
at the expense of the world's hungry.
Mike Meyers Star Tribune (MN) February 3, 2007
Full fuel tanks could mean many more
empty bellies within the next two decades, according to new research by
two University of Minnesota economists. The number of hungry people
worldwide could grow by more than 50 percent by 2020, as corn, sugar and
other food staples are increasingly devoted to making fuel here and
abroad, according to the projections by C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer.
...By the two economists' reckoning, every 1 percent rise in the price of
staple foods translates into another 16 million people worldwide going
hungry. And they forecast that the prices of many grain staples will rise
by 11 to 40 percent just by 2010, with steeper increases coming afterward.
The net profit of a 50-million-gallon
ethanol plant today is about 1.1 cents a gallon of ethanol produced, down
from 50 cents a gallon on Jan. 1 and $2.50 a gallon in June, said Rick
Kment, an analyst at DTN, an agricultural-commodities research firm. Such
slim profit margins have started worrying investors, who not so long ago
were giddy over ethanol-linked stocks. ...All this means that more
taxpayer dollars could go toward ethanol production, at the same time that
taxpayers are footing bigger bills for food.
Dramatically rising international corn
prices, spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol, have led to
expensive tortillas. That, in turn, has led to lower sales for vendors...
and angry protests by consumers. The uproar is exposing this country's
outsize dependence on tortillas in its diet -- especially among the poor
-- and testing the acumen of the new president, Felipe Calderón.
According to Robert Parsons, an
agriculture economist with the University of Vermont Extension Service,
there is no end in sight for the high price of corn. Corn prices have
skyrocketed on global markets, he said, because of the diversion of the
corn crop to the production of ethanol, which is becoming more economic
because of the high price of oil.
Tortilla prices jumped nearly 14 percent
over the past year, a move Mexico's Central Bank Gov. Guillermo Ortiz
called "unjustifiable" in a country where inflation ran about 4 percent.
...For low-income Mexicans, who earn about $18 a day on average, the
increasing prices have hit hard. According to the government, about half
of the country's 107 million citizens live in poverty. ...The U.S.
Agriculture Department said Friday that ethanol plants and foreign buyers
are gobbling U.S. corn supplies, pushing prices as high as $3.40 a bushel,
the highest in more than a decade. ...Grains traders forecast tortilla
prices will rise by 20 to 25 percent during the first quarter of 2007.
Investment in fuel ethanol distilleries
has soared since the late-2005 oil price hikes, but data collection in
this fast-changing sector has fallen behind. Because of inadequate data
collection on the number of new plants under construction, the quantity of
grain that will be needed for fuel ethanol distilleries has been vastly
understated. Farmers, feeders, food processors, ethanol investors, and
grain-importing countries are basing decisions on incomplete data.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects that
distilleries will require only 60 million tons of corn from the 2008
harvest. But here at the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), we estimate that
distilleries will need 139 million tons—more than twice as much. If the
EPI estimate is at all close to the mark, the emerging competition between
cars and people for grain will likely drive world grain prices to levels
never seen before.
....This unprecedented diversion of the world’s leading grain
crop to the production of fuel will affect food prices everywhere. As the
world corn price rises, so too do those of wheat and rice, both because of
consumer substitution among grains and because the crops compete for land.
Both corn and wheat futures were already trading at 10-year highs in late
2006.
....With corn
supplies tightening fast, rising prices will affect not only products made
directly from corn, such as breakfast cereals, but also those produced
using corn, including milk, eggs, cheese, butter, poultry, pork, beef,
yogurt, and ice cream. The risk is that soaring food prices could generate
a consumer backlash against the fuel ethanol industry.
....From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive demand for fuel is
insatiable. The grain it takes to fill a 25-gallon tank with ethanol just
once will feed one person for a whole year. Converting the entire U.S.
grain harvest to ethanol would satisfy only 16 percent of U.S. auto fuel
needs.
The competition for grain between the world’s 800 million
motorists who want to maintain their mobility and its 2 billion poorest
people who are simply trying to survive is emerging as an epic issue.
Soaring food prices could lead to urban food riots in scores of
lower-income countries that rely on grain imports, such as Indonesia,
Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, and Mexico. The resulting political instability
could in turn disrupt global economic progress, directly affecting all
countries. It is not only food prices that are at stake, but trends in the
Nikkei Index and the Dow Jones Industrials as well.
WASHINGTON, DC - In an initiative to further advance President George W. Bush’s
vision for a hydrogen economy, Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman and Agriculture
Secretary Mike Johanns today announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the
Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) aimed at the development
of hydrogen technologies, particularly the more cost-effective production of hydrogen from
biomass resources. This effort is part of the President’s $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel
Initiative, which aims to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign sources of energy in addition
to greenhouse gas emissions.
"Biomass technologies hold great promise for our rural communities
and are a promising route to renewable hydrogen production," Secretary Bodman said.
"By working together to make production of hydrogen from biomass more cost-effective,
we are moving the nation one step closer to a hydrogen economy and energy
independence."
"This partnership will hasten the day when hydrogen and fuel cell
technologies are providing affordable domestic energy throughout our rural communities and
the agriculture and forestry industries," said Agriculture Secretary Johanns.
"Using technology to develop cost-effective energy supplies for consumers is an
important goal of President Bush’s energy policy."
Through this MOU DOE and USDA experts will meet regularly to share
information on technologies and activities of mutual interest related to reducing the cost
of chemically converting biomass to hydrogen. Biomass sources that can be used for
hydrogen production include ethanol, crop and forest residues, and dedicated energy crops
such as switchgrass or willow. This collaboration could help speed the deployment of
emerging technologies - such as stationary fuel cells that can provide remote electric
power for agricultural uses.
Transitioning to hydrogen technologies in the agriculture industry and
in our rural communities is important for a number of reasons: Renewable, farm-based
biomass can fuel hydrogen production; energy-hungry agricultural vehicles fueled by
hydrogen can have the same efficiency and environmental benefits planned for light-duty
cars and trucks; and hydrogen fuel cell technology can provide power for remote locations
and communities.
DOE and USDA are also working together through the Hydrogen and Fuel
Cell Research and Development Interagency Task Force, which is part of the
President’s National Science and Technology Council. The MOU announced today will
strengthen that relationship and help expand the use of hydrogen technologies throughout
the nation.
The President’s Hydrogen Fuel Initiative seeks to make practical,
cost-effective and clean energy hydrogen fuel cell vehicles commercially available to
Americans by 2020. The Department of Energy (DOE) is working with the automotive and
energy industries to overcome the technical and economic barriers to a hydrogen economy
through research and testing.
Please help us to continue
this important independent information resource.
"It could well be that the first country to
seriously address the issues of creating a market for renewables would
become the central location for a major new international business
sector - with all the positive consequences that carries in terms of
economic activity and employment." ------------- Rodney Chase
CEO BP
--------------
"We all share the responsibility for carrying out this project, for the
assumption of responsibility is part of the dignity of human beings."
------------
Juergen Shrempp
Chairman
DaimlerChrysler
-----------
"Energy sources like coal and oil once overcame an economy based on
horsepower. So, I suspect, our carbon-based economy may itself pass from
the scene to be replaced, perhaps, by hydrogen."
-------------
Spencer Abraham
Secretary,
US Dept of Energy
-------------
"General Motors absolutely sees the long-term future of the world being
based on a hydrogen economy.” ------------
Larry Burns
Director of R&D
General Motors
-------------
For generations of
North Americans, the great grain elevators and silos of the Midwest have
served as an emergency food supply for both the United States and Canada.
But now, as grain is trucked directly from the farm to the bubbling ethanol plants,
The Great Ethanol Fraud, a cynical, unworkable scheme concocted by the
Bush Administration with imbecilic congressional complicity to seize
taxpayer funds in the name of renewable energy from food, is bearing its
bitter fruit for the Third World. Now that even the leaders of the Big
Agriculture companies are beginning to lose their moral resolve in the
face of burgeoning food prices in poor countries, we can soon expect that
the inevitable "compassionate U.S. humanitarian aid" will be added to the
cost of this immense fraud on taxpayers -- stratospheric levels of
subsidies, increased fossil fuel use, increased coal pollution, wholesale
environmental destruction of the tropics (resulting in an increased carbon
dioxide burden), river and ocean pollution, decreased grain export and
food aid, rising grocery costs across America, global political upheaval
(looming food riots), loss of crop diversity and loss of indigenous
homelands (human rights abuse) - and you get the most expensive, stupid
and harmful giveaway program in history.
