From the WSJ energy blog:
Is the anti-ethanol crusade beginning to gather steam among mainstream Western publications?
Two weeks after The Economist confessed, in a stunned-sounding editorial that it found itself in agreement with Fidel Castro's vehement critique of foods-as-fuels, Foreign Affairs magazine has also jumped on board. In the magazine's May edition, two professors from the University of Minnesota write that, like Castro and The Economist, they believe the growing use of biofuels may starve the world's poor by pushing up food prices for minimal environmental gains.
"Washington's fixation on corn-based ethanol has distorted the national agenda," charge the authors, noting that corn and soybeans are some of the least environmentally friendly feedstocks to use for biofuels.
Word.
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Comments
View as Flat
Biodiversivist Posted 9:02 am
18 Apr 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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David Roberts Posted 9:05 am
18 Apr 2007
www.grist.org
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:06 am
18 Apr 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Ron Steenblik Posted 7:48 am
19 Apr 2007
The mainstream media started writing glowingly about ethanol 18 months ago because it offered that rarity that so many newspapers and television news programs believe is necessary today to balance the gloom and doom: a nationally significant "good news" story. What was there not to love? In one fell swoop, we:
solve the farming crisis
increase rural employment and stop rural-urban migration
stick it to those terrorist-funding oil exporters (er, like Canada?)
clean the air
reduce CO2 emissions
reduce gasoline prices at the pump (yes, the press swallowed that fiction -- hook, line and sinker)
obviate any need for Americans to change their driving habits
Moreover, star-quality entrepreneurs, like Vinod Khosla and Richard Branson, were getting into the act. Gosh!!
And if anybody (few did) pointed to the fact that all this expansion of ethanol was heavily subsidized, they were treated as killjoys, or met with the predictable response of "well, at least the money is going to the Midwest instead of the Middle East!"
Just about the moment that the MSM had squeezed out as much good news as it could out of that story, numerous doubting Thomases appeared, with a very different story. Now the MSM had a new angle. Dissention! Opposition! New coalitions!
So, they will string this story along for awhile ... until another "feel good" story comes along once again.
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