Jeff Goodell doesn't like ethanol

His new piece says so in downright shrill terms 10

Jeff Goodell (see Grist interview) is apparently incapable of writing anything I don't love. The latest is a piece in Rolling Stone called "Ethanol Scam."

It's downright shrill! Here's what Goodell has to say about the ethanol hype:

This is not just hype -- it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.

So why bother? Because the whole point of corn ethanol is not to solve America's energy crisis, but to generate one of the great political boondoggles of our time. Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 -- twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners. And a study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to as much as $1.38 per gallon -- about half of ethanol's wholesale market price.

(And yes, he addresses cellulosic.)

As Robert Rapier points out, this quote from Dave Juday -- about the Senate's recently passed 36 billion gallon ethanol mandate -- is hilarious:

"It's like trying to solve a traffic problem by mandating hovercraft. Except we don't have hovercraft."

This one's a must read.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/david_h_roberts.

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  1. naturescene Posted 11:29 am
    01 Aug 2007

    saw this the other day

    Glad to see some sense over ethanol is making it into popular culture.

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  2. Karen Lee Orr Posted 12:25 pm
    01 Aug 2007

    The Great Biofuel Fraud

    I subscribe to several news services that send me agrofuel articles from around the world every day.

    When I first subscribed, most of the articles were agrofuel business promotions and pro-agrofuel editorials.

    Now I receive so many good, solid, anti-agrofuel articles, I can hardly keep up with them.

    Below are links to two good agrofuel articles that came out in the last few days.  One is from The Asia Times and the other from The Washington Post.

    "Big Oil is one of the major engines driving the biofuels bandwagon.  Measuring all energy inputs to produce ethanol, from production of nitrogen fertilizer to energy needed to clean the considerable waste from biofuel refineries,  they use more energy than they produce. That translates into huge profit for clever oil giants that re-profile themselves as "green energy" producers.

    So it's little wonder that ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP are all into biofuels. This past May, BP announced the largest ever research-and-development grant to a university, $500 million to the University of California-Berkeley, to fund BP-dictated R&D into alternative energy, including biofuels. Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Program got $100 million from ExxonMobil; University of California-Davis got $25 million from Chevron for its Bio-energy Research Group. Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative takes $15 million from BP."

    The Great Biofuel Fraud:
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/IH01Dj01.html ...

    "There was already a race for Brazilian ethanol, and President Bush's
    announcements gave more credibility to the process," said Roberto
    Rodrigues, former Brazilian agriculture minister, who formed the
    Interamerican Ethanol Commission with former Florida governor Jeb Bush
    in December.

    Losing Forests to Fuel Cars
    Ethanol Sugarcane Threatens Brazil's Wooded Savanna
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007 ...

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  3. justlou Posted 9:02 pm
    01 Aug 2007

    READ THIS!

    Anyone on this site who has posted messages hyping ethanol needs to read the Rolling Stone and the Washington Post articles.  

    I have been saying much the same here for a few weeks.  The more I learn the more dire the situation looks. The numbers in the WAPO article are staggering.  

    The policy this country has set in legislation is leading much of this destruction.  And it is very sad to see such "progressive" people like George Soros funding this blind stampede along with the likes of Cargill.  

    This is INSANE! and we need to be MAD!  

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  4. naturescene Posted 10:11 pm
    01 Aug 2007

    subsidies for ethanol

    is one of the issues that most economists, libertarians, and environmentalists could probably agree on.  It's a bad idea.  

    Permalink

  5. alphaniner Posted 11:51 pm
    01 Aug 2007

    rebuttal to the asia times article

    Here is a rebuttal to many of the points stressed in the Asia Times article.

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  6. naturescene Posted 12:01 am
    02 Aug 2007

    sorry

    but that's a pretty crappy rebuttal

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  7. mpeppard Posted 4:30 am
    02 Aug 2007

    subsidized ethanol

    Just a couple of quick points to ponder.

    1.  all energy is heavily subsidized - oil, nuclear, solar and wind

    2.  increased prices for subsized American corn will HELP small farmers in the developing world who can't make a living because of American agricultural products undercutting them in price

    3. if corn ethanol can jump start the ethanol industry to the point where cellulose ethanol production is embraced then I say it's worth it

    4. for years enviro's have been touting ethanol and now we're railing against it! no wonder big business is able to keep the environmental movement at bay...how about suggesting solutions such as a move towards biodiesel or the use of waste products only in the production of ethanol.  solutions are just as important as criticisms

    5. The U.S. is not the only country on the planet so dumping on subsized U.S. biofuels shouldn't be extended across the board

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  8. naturescene Posted 4:51 am
    02 Aug 2007

    other points to ponder

    1. Ending all subsidies for energy is the way to go

    2. Raising US corn prices might help some developing farmers, but it will also harm low-end consumers who live off corn-based staple foods.

    3. Corn ethanol can have devastating effects on aquatic systems due to the fertilizer required.  Is that worth it?

    4. Maybe enviros did tout ethanol.  Some people (notably environmental economists) have been warning about ethanol the entire time.  It's just that now people are choosing to listen.

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  9. GreyFlcn Posted 6:02 am
    02 Aug 2007

    Rebuttal to the Rebuttal

    1. We get X ammount of money to reduce CO2. We aren't spending it wisely if we're spending in excess of $500 per ton of CO2 avoided. When you could instead spend as little as $4-30 to accomplish the same thing on the chicago climate exchange.
    http://greyfalcon.net/biotaxes.png

    2. The raising corn prices does not help small farmers, it hurts small farmers.  It does help massive farmers though, but they don't really need any help to begin with.
    http://greyfalcon.net/farmers2
    http://greyfalcon.net/farmers

    3. Cellulosic Ethanol is worse than Corn Ethanol in GHG emmisions.
    http://jeq.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/1/3
    http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/Publication ...
    http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/inf_paper_2g-bfs.pdf

    And both of which are pointless money pits.
    http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol.png
    http://greyfalcon.net/sugarsolar

    4. "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?" -Keynes  You don't continue to plow your head into a brick wall after you find out, "Hey maybe thats not such a good idea".

    Thats the kind of Leadership we've come to enjoy in Iraq.  Are you saying that the proper way to move forward?

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  10. libertyvini Posted 10:17 pm
    30 Aug 2007

    Jeff Goodell Hates Ethanol And You Should Too

    The
    libertyguys
    have been saying this for a couple of years, here and elsewhere;"Why Ethanol Will Never Economically Replace Gasoline"

    Now if we could just get people to apply the same skepticism to corporate pledges to curb global warming! People, Big Business and Big Government LOVE to stampede the herd into policies that sound appealing but are really just boodoggles designed to enrichen them and screw you and me.

    Vince Daliessio www.libertyguys.org

    Permalink

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