This Guardian story was written by reporter Ed Pilkington. Grist is a member of the Guardian's Environment Network.
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BROWNSVILLE, Neb. -- Barack Obama has enjoyed near-universal backing from American environmentalists, with the Sierra Club, the country's largest grass-roots environmental group, and Friends of the Earth both endorsing the Democratic nominee for president.
But there is one policy area in which Obama and the environmental lobby have increasingly grown apart: ethanol. As senator for the corn-growing state of Illinois, Obama has been a firm advocate of corn-based ethanol, about 9 billion gallons of which is now added to U.S. gasoline every year to reduce imports of foreign oil.
Ethanol has been booming in the past two years across the corn heartlands of the United States. But environmentalists are critical of the rush towards the fuel. They say its value as an alternative energy is debatable: one unit of energy expended in producing it gives less than two units of energy in the form of ethanol. Add to that the pressure on land use to grow more corn, and some analysts say its impact in terms of global warming emissions is actually negative.
On top of that, ethanol has been blamed for contributing to the devastating global rise in food prices. The huge demand for corn to feed the 178 U.S. distilleries that now pockmark the mid-west has diverted the supply from food markets and distorted international trade. About a third of American corn is now gobbled up by the industry, and the price of corn more than doubled to a peak of $5 a bushel earlier this year.
Yet Obama has continued to back the $33 billion spent by the federal government every year to subsidize ethanol at the pump. The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, by contrast, has said such subsidies should be removed; unlike Obama he also calls for a lifting of trade tariffs imposed on the importation of more efficient Brazilian ethanol drawn from sugar cane.
The effect of the ethanol craze is visible on a drive across the Great Plains ending in the small town of Brownsville, Nebraska. The road passes through mile upon mile of flat land covered in nothing but rotting corn stalks after the harvest.
Corky Jones is a fourth-generation Nebraskan farmer who grows corn and soy beans on a 2,400 acre farm worked with his three sons. The ethanol bonanza has increased his yearly income by more than $500,000 just through the rise in corn prices. A long-term Democrat, his support for Obama has been strengthened by the senator's position on ethanol.
"Alternative energy is the cry of the land," he says.
He also rejects criticism of the fuel as propaganda put about by the oil companies. "The oil giants don't want to give up a drop of their oil to anybody else."
The idea that the oil lobby is behind criticism of ethanol is shared by Roger Hill, who manages an ethanol plant in Craig, Missouri, about an hour's drive away. Here the corn is mashed, cooked and fermented, and then distilled into the alcohol that is ethanol.
Hill is a life-time Republican. Though he agrees with Obama's position on ethanol, he says he still will not vote for the Democrat because he does not trust him to follow through on his promises. His distrust is intensified by his mistaken belief that Obama is a Muslim.
Obama has softened his stance on ethanol slightly in recent weeks after his controversial support for it came under media scrutiny. He says he may now rethink the policy, although he has not yet withdrawn his backing.
That puts environmentalists in a quandary in terms of their overall affinity for the Democratic candidate. Carl Pope, the national director of the Sierra Club, told the Guardian: "I don't agree with his position on ethanol. But I think that once elected president he will do the learning that is required. He has some catching up to do."
Obama may be spared an awkward confrontation over ethanol in any case. Federal requirements for the quantity of ethanol produced in 2008 have already been met, leading to a decline in demand.
Rapidly falling oil prices in the wake of the Wall Street crash have further damaged demand for alternative fuels. Ethanol plants are struggling under reduced orders, and some have closed; with it the price of corn has also begun to decline. The ethanol bubble may be about to burst.
Palin bashes ‘cap and tax’ and commends Obama on nuclear
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Comments
View as Flat
Angelsnecropolis Posted 7:24 am
28 Oct 2008
As it stands right now Alternative Energy is practically seared into every Americans minds and the masses are ignorant to the truth about ethanol. Farmers hold too much say in the matter and Obama won't lose their vote or support by opposing corn based ethanol. Until corn based ethanol gets a bad wrap just like oil and the majority of Americans realize that it is bad, his position wont change.
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David Roberts Posted 7:42 am
28 Oct 2008
Behind the scenes, the worm is turning on ethanol. Reality bats last.
grist.org
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Delay And Deny Posted 10:15 am
28 Oct 2008
Pull his string, out comes a subsidy.
Obama is Yellow...not Green.
Vote McCain-Palin
We'll take on the Polluters.
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Jonas Posted 11:28 am
28 Oct 2008
This is easy to see: world food prices are crashing, dropping 40, 50 and up to 60%, while there's not less biofuels being produced.
Even The Guardian knows it:
Ethanol played no role in food price rises, we were wrong:
Heavy demand for corn from ethanol makers was seen as a key driver of corn futures to record highs in June, but since then the sharp decline of corn along with other commodities shows that belief was mistaken.
Corn is down about 50 percent from its record high in June, even as the amount of the grain used to produce the renewable fuel in the United States remained the same.
"The record high prices were a speculative bubble".
Source: The Guardian.
A whole huge army of biofuel critics was wrong on this. One has to wonder, if they are totally wrong on that crucial topic, how can they be right on any other of the contentious topics?
I tend to go with Lula's analysis: "not investing in biofuels is a crime against humanity", because the vast majority of the world's poor are farmers, and they stand to benefit from the biofuels opportunity.
Gristmill is one of those blogs who still has to write that 'mea culpa' piece: sorry, we screwed up on this food-versus-fuel thing, and perhaps we are responsible for denying the world's farmers (that is: the world's poor) a chance for development.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:46 pm
28 Oct 2008
Ethanol no longer seen as big driver of food price
Nobody he interviewed said that. Note that the article also says:
The government has forecast that U.S. food prices will rise 5.5 percent this year and 4.5 percent in 2009.
The use of corn to produce ethanol in the United States does add to the price of the grain. Analysts, including some in the ethanol sector, say ethanol demand adds about 75 cents to $1.00 per bushel to the price of corn, as a rule of thumb. Other analysts say it adds around 20 percent, or just under 80 cents per bushel at current prices
Those estimates hint that $4 per bushel corn might be priced at only $3 without demand for ethanol fuel
The reporter got his information from
Stewart Ramsey, a biofuel enthusiast and pumpkin farmer who also works as an agricultural analyst for a consulting company. Here are some quotes taken from the an interview with the subtitle:
Agricultural Economist Says The Days Of Cheap Food May Be Gone For Good
To get newspapers to carry his article the Reuters reporter (or more likely his editor) converted the above title to "Ethanol no longer seen as big driver of food price."
It's definitely a bigger problem [high food prices] in other countries. When we say other countries, we need to talk about countries that spend a large proportion of their disposal dollar on food.... The U.S., Western Europe -- it's not as important, because they don't spend that much of their disposal income on food. But you go to Africa, Asia, parts of the Pacific Rim, countries that have much lower incomes, and they spend upwards of 50 percent of their disposal income on food. The kind of price increases we've seen on the real core staples -- grains, rice, things that are almost directly consumed -- those price changes translate into very direct hits to those consumers.
We subsidized this industry, the biofuels industry, so that it could get on its feet; it did. So it would develop technologies to make it continuously more efficient; it has. And now it's competitive. The fix to that is that food prices might actually have to rise a little bit more to make food just out-compete fuel as a demand source for basic food commodities. Food will always win. That's my personal bias.
We had a lot of reasons for prices to go up and to go up a lot and ethanol use was one of those
The Reuters reporter also tapped Don Roose, a commodity broker, based in, hold on to your seat, Iowa. Here he is on his website.
And finally he went to the the Renewable Fuels Association. Here's the headline on their website:
Food/Fuel Reality Check: "Speculative Bubble" Was Real Source of Corn Price Increases Says New Study
There was no study. There was only an interview of a pumpkin farming biofuel enthusiast who also works as an agricultural consultant.
This is another thing I hate about traditional print media. How many other biofuel proponents will see this title and draw the same erroneous conclusion you did? Here are a few more examples of this phenomena that come to my mind:
From MIT:
MIT ethanol analysis confirms benefits of biofuels
But down in the article it says:
Based on her "most likely" outcomes, she concluded that traveling a kilometer using ethanol does indeed consume more energy than traveling the same distance using gasoline.
Here's another one, also from MIT:
'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution
The title is also complete BS. All the guy did was discover a potentially cheaper catalyst. None of the hydrogen economy showstoppers were eliminated. Jabailo has been linking to it for a month now as proof of the viability of hydrogen for transport.
Here's another doosy, this time from my alma mater:
Purdue University touts hydrogen energy breakthrough
Also BS.
Back to your example. Every analysis I've seen on the impact biofuels have had on food summed most of it up to commodities speculation including my own analysis. Everyone expected the price to decrease from its speculation surge maximum, and it has. Biofuels were and still are one of he big players in the price of food on the global market as I and everyone else have been saying all along. You can't suddenly stuff 35,000 square miles of food into gas tanks and not see a ripple effect.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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vakibs Posted 10:13 pm
28 Oct 2008
Seriously, here is a blot on grist's credentials.. First let's fix that before talking about blots on Obama's credentials.
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:47 am
29 Oct 2008
...and are getting nothing in return for it. Shhhh. Hopefully none of them will see my comment and pull their ads. Keep this under your hat.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Jonas Posted 5:38 am
29 Oct 2008
This will have devastating environmental effects, as the poor -- who are farmers -- will now once again be trapped in low farm product prices and remain in poverty. This poverty is strictly correlated with environmental destruction and degradation.
Everything you have ever said about the link between biofuels and food prices has proved to be false (you do are able to read a basic price chart, are you?)
So how can we trust that anything else you say has any rational meaning?
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:24 am
29 Oct 2008
Quoted from above:
The use of corn to produce ethanol in the United States ...adds around 20 percent [to the price of corn]...
But you go to Africa ...and they spend up wards of 50 percent of their disposal income on food
Let's say I'm a poor African surviving on the equivalent of $2.00 a day (like 800 million others). Corn ethanol has driven the price of corn up 20% so my dollar can't by a dollar's worth of corn anymore. So I eat 80 cents worth instead and tell everyone that those aren't my ribs sticking out. I tell them I've been working out and those are my six pack abs.
There. I can't make it any simpler than that. See above posts for sources.
America's ethanol fuel is screwing with the food supply of hundreds of millions of human beings who are living on the edge of starvation to line the pockets of Iowa corn farmer voters. It does not take very long to permanently damage a growing child's brain with malnutrition.
Today's biofuels not only exacerbate food prices, they also exacerbate carbon sink destruction, global warming, and biodiversity loss. We need to stop mandating the use of, and subsidizing the cost of, versions that pour gas on the flames consuming the biosphere.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Delay And Deny Posted 11:50 am
29 Oct 2008
Hold on...every time I mentioned hydrogen before the Nocera breakthrough, the only argument raised was how much electricity in it takes to disassociate the hydrogen and oxygen in water.
Now a documented process exists that 100% efficient.
No other barriers were every mentioned.
Which leads me to believe what I have always thought: The "Greens" aren't about adopting better technology that is greener and cheaper.
The Greens just want to promote their own fifedoms so they can benefit from Gore's scaremongering. It seems like they are funded by Toyota because every other word is "hybrid".
Hydrogen is a disruptive technology -- it disrupts smokestack energy -- BUT -- it also disrupts wind and solar and battery technology.
With hydrogen as a storage medium, you don't need as many windmills (sorry, T. Boone). Or generators.
And with fuel cell cars you don't need batteries or two heavy engines in your car.
No wonder the Grist Ecologists and Al Gore and Joe Romm are fighting Hydrogen Tooth and Nail -- it eats their bacon!
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:03 pm
29 Oct 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 2:45 pm
29 Oct 2008
What if the science indicates, through actual R & D, that there are better biofuels, obtained from waste, like biogas, that work better and offset GHG? I think he would switch his biofuel plans from ethanol to farm and landfill and sewage plant biogas.
Our job is to help him see the light of reason. Most of the research has already been done.
I like his idea of supporting R&D in many different areas, even if only to prove nuclear power, clean coal, and ethanol farming and other ill-conceived schemes unworkable and uncompetitive.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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bhl4lindsay Posted 5:25 am
30 Oct 2008
http://wiki.idebate.org/index.php/Debate:Corn_ethanol
There are many arguments here, but the most important is: corn ethanol is an inefficient, indirect use of the sun's energy. Converting it to electricity directly through photovoltaics makes much more sense. Generally, electric cars should be seen as the future. Stocking electric cars with the many sources of clean electricity is ideal. And, the infrastructure already exists for this: the grid (it just needs to be upgraded).
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