Corn ethanol fiasco, brought to you by Congress and agribusiness
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Congress is about to have the U.S. embark on a foolhardy alternative fuel journey, because it is much easier to try to replace oil in our engines and keep the economy slumping along than it is to alter the logic of production based on consumption of oil, whatever its source.
We need to consume drastically less fuel than we do now in our world and especially in this society. The politicians and their corporate sponsors want to simply replace one fuel with another, and damn the consequences for future generations, including the future of our own.
So, as I so often do here, I want to link some stories from today’s newspapers to give you a picture of what I mean. Regular visitors know that we have blasted corn ethanol before as a fuel of the future. It requires a great deal of fossil fuel energy to produce, including the oil that goes into the fertilizers; it uses up an incredible amount of land, and that’s before the new mandates in Congress’ energy bill, which increase production from the current seven billion to 15 billion gallons of ethanol per year by 2020; and it is already forcing up prices of corn and other grains, raising prices of feed for livestock, which means steadily rising prices for the food we eat.
To add to the lack of forethought about consequences, poor countries of our world are facing severe food shortages as grain supply stocks dwindle, corn among them. The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of corn for food, so you can imagine what is coming for poor people as we concentrate on how to keep fueling our cars, trucks, and SUVs.
Biomass could fill out some of the mandate, but the technology for this is way behind corn ethanol, and farmers are chomping at the bit, as are the agribusiness giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Conagra, for the profits lying latent in the legislation. Remember that grain producers also still get huge tax-payer subsidies for corn, soy and other grain production, and you can see how this whole system is rigged.
Really, friends, if we don’t have trouble sleeping at night over this moral dilemma, then we are truly, seriously morally bankrupt as a nation — we absolutely will not consider altering our means of moving around, or moving around a lot less, or lowering our consumption even in the face of worldwide hunger? Are we really that sick?
Meanwhile, that’s not all. Here’s another problem with ethanol — increased corn production is causing the widening of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico — a zone where everything is, well, dead — and this new mandate could bring about the collapse of the gulf’s ecosystem.
So, folks, that’s all that’s wrong with corn ethanol, a few little things. Actually, there’s a longer list — like the undermining of individually or family-owned farming, the undermining of healthy food-growing practices and organic farming, and on and on. The economics of this are not good for our people, or the well-being of the planet, while rich corporate investors rake in profits off the rise in hunger and ecosystem breakdown, sort of like the oil companies enriching their shareholders off the high price of crude.
Ecological justice is becoming the overarching justice struggle of our times. And there is no better lens through which to view that struggle than this one.
So here are the articles. Would love to know what you think about all this.
Food and fuel compete for land, by Andrew Martin, NY Times Business Day
As ethanol takes its first steps, Congress proposes a giant leap, by Clifford Krauss, NY Times Business Day
World food supply is shrinking, U.S. agency warns, by Elisabeth Rosenthal, again the NY Times
As corn booms, Gulf suffers, by Henry Jackson, Associated Press. Was in the Milwaukee paper this morning, but here’s where I found it online.
To read the food supply alarm directly from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, go here.
A highlight from the FAO press release by way of conclusion:
food security is being adversely affected by unprecedented price hikes for basic food, driven by historically low food stocks, droughts and floods linked to climate change, high oil prices and growing demand for bio-fuels. High international cereal prices have already sparked food riots in several countries.
Let’s think about that as we get in our cars today. Then let’s think about that other world that we must create.
[tags] corn ethanol, ethanol mandate, energy bill, fuel or food, rising corn prices, world food supply shrinking, FAO[/tags]
December 18th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
One fiasco after another, I suppose.
The science of climate change and Earth’s ecology have been sidelined by the big-business interests of selfish elites who exert control of huge concentrations of financial wealth as well as people with political and militaristic power.
The “powers that be” are evidently in denial of reality and unwilling to openly and honorably express their understanding of what 2000 IPCC Nobel Laureate scientists are reporting with regard to the ominous, distinctly human-induced predicament that is looming before the human community. That many too many politicians and economic powerbrokers adamantly support the soon to become unsustainable global enterprise of endless big-business expansion, does not favor our children’s well-being or safety, I believe. These leaders appear to have pledged their primary allegiance and reverent devotion to the short-term ‘successes’ of unbridled economic globalization, regardless of the long-term potential for catastrophe that such a recklessly unrestrained and unrealistic pursuit portends. For leaders of the political economy to conspicuously ignore the carefully and skillfully obtained scientific evidence on climate change, and global warming in particular, is an incomprehensible failure with potentially profound implications for the future of our children.
Plainly, what is necessary now is clarity of vision, intellectual honesty and courage as well as a willingness among leaders to begin “centering” their attention on the probability of threat(s) to humanity that could soon be posed by the gigantic scale and patently unsustainable growth rate of the over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human population worldwide in our time.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
December 19th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
The children. Would it make a difference if people had to defend this short-term corporate profit-oriented production to the children who will inherit the world we leave behind? If we thought about all of this as we look our children in the eye, if we thought, too, about their children, would we make different choices?
Before the next SUV purchase, before the next vote for national office, before that next glance at the stock portfolio, can we stop and really look our children in the eye and ask what in the world we are doing to them?
Margaret
December 23rd, 2007 at 8:26 am
We really do need to sort this predicament out faster because the “window of opportunity” to address the global challenges soon to be confronted by humanity is beginning to close. While we argue, too little action occurs.
The “powers that be” are evidently in denial of reality and unwilling to openly and honorably express their understanding of what 2000 IPCC Nobel Laureate scientists are reporting with regard to the ominous, distinctly human-induced predicament that is looming before the human community. That many too many economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and minions in the mass media adamantly support the soon to become unsustainable global enterprise of endless big-business expansion, come what may, does not favor our children’s well-being or safety, I believe. The talking heads appear to have pledged their primary allegiance and selfish devotion to their benefactors and to the short-term `successes’ of unbridled economic globalization, regardless of the long-term potential for catastrophe that such a recklessly unrestrained and unrealistic pursuit portends. For leaders of the political economy to conspicuously ignore —- much less debunk by using denialists from ideological ‘think tanks’ —- the carefully and skillfully obtained scientific evidence from the IPCC on climate change, and global warming in particular, is an incomprehensible failure with potentially profound implications for a good enough future of our children.
Plainly, what is necessary now is clarity of vision, intellectual honesty, coherence of mind and courage as well as a willingness among leaders to begin “centering” their attention on the probability of human-driven threats to humanity that could soon be posed by the gigantic scale and patently unsustainable growth rate of the over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species, even now engulfing the surface of the Earth.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:31 am
Are we fiddling while ‘Rome is burning’ and Earth is overheating?
Are we communicating as if we are living in a modern day Tower of Babel? Is our spectacular failure to communicate reasonably and sensibly about whatsoever is somehow real, and to widely share adequate understandings regarding both the family of humanity within the natural order of living things and the limitations of the planet we inhabit, in evidence here and now.
Perhaps the human community is indeed in a serious predicament, but only in part because of the objective biological and physical circumstances defining our distinctly human-driven predicament. The global challenges in the offing are further complicated by our incredible failure to communicate effectively about the potentially pernicious results derived from having recklessly grown a soon to become patently unsustainable, colossal global economy, one that we have artificially designed, conveniently constructed, and unrealistically expanded without regard for the requirements of biophysical reality.
Could it be that the current scale and unchecked growth rate of the global economy is unsustainably driving both per human over-consumption and unrestrained human population growth toward the collapse of Earth’s ecology?
Sincerely,
Steve