The "Republican war on science" has evidently opened a new front: economics, a discipline often fetishized by the right.
In a startling article published July 4, the Guardian reports that in a "secret" study, a World Bank senior economist concluded that the recent explosion in biofuels use has driven global food prices up by 75 percent -- a number much higher than estimates from other major sources. The USDA -- which has vigorously defended President Bush's seemingly bottomless support for crop-based fuels -- claims biofuels account for only 3 percent of recent food price hikes.
The World Bank study's author, Don Mitchell, finished his assessment in April, the Guardian reports. But it never saw light of day until the British newspaper got hold of a leaked copy.
Why was it suppressed? "Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush," the Guardian reports.
I hope the Guardian piece inspires World Bank to release that report. It's been extremely difficult to find reliable analysis on how U.S. and European biofuel mandates and subsidies have been affecting food prices.
Biofuel booster/investors like Vinod Khosla like to point to studies from private research houses like Informa (PDF) and LECG (PDF), both of which concur with the USDA's assessment that the biofuel boom has virtually nothing to do with higher food prices.
But click on the above Informa link, and you find its report was "prepared for the Renewable Fuels Foundation." Meanwhile, the author of the LECG paper lists among his clients "the Renewable Fuels Association, National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association, and United Soybean Board, the National Biodiesel Board, [and] the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association."
Other studies, too, deliver conclusions that intersect with the interests of their funders. Keith Collins, for example, recently sashayed through the USDA/food industry revolving door, changing his gig from chief USDA economist to researcher for Kraft Foods. Transnational food processors like Kraft compete with ethanol makers for corn, and they would prefer to see ethanol mandates be discarded.
Coincidentally or not, Collins's recent Kraft-funded study (PDF) found that the ethanol boom has pushed up food prices by 25-35 percent.
These conflicting conclusions -- and the conflicting interests that fund them -- make the repressed World Bank report all the more important. The World Bank is hardly a neutral institution; Bush himself appointed the bank's current director, Robert Zoelick, last year. Zoelick has been bouncing between high-level posts in Republican administrations and the private sector since the 1980s. To claim the World Bank position, he left a plumb job at Goldman Sachs -- which he gained after five years of high-level posts in the Bush administration.
Zoelick's loyalty could explain why the World Bank has been hiding the biofuel study from the public since April. One unnamed "senior development source" told the Guardian that, if released, the report would "put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House."
But even though the bank's leadership is politically beholden to Washington, its staff has always been capable of producing work cogently critical of Washington's agenda. Unlike Keith Collins or the rent-a-researchers cited by Vinod Khosla, World Bank staffers don't answer directly to people with a specific agenda on the biofuel question.
Indeed, given that 100 million additional people have been pushed under the poverty line worldwide by the recent spike in food prices, the World Bank has an interest in figuring out exactly what's behind the spike.
Until the report goes public, it's impossible to figure out exactly what's in it; all we've got is the Guardian account. So why is its estimate for the effect of biofuels on food prices so much higher than others? Here's what the Guardian says:
It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.
The third factor -- speculation -- is often treated as an independent cause for the price spikes. But when you think about it, why did speculators suddenly start bidding up the price of grains and soybeans two years ago? Answer: because they knew the U.S. and European governments were insuring a steady, and rising, market for those goods in the years ahead. So the big speculation wave stems from the welter of mandates and subsidies propping up the biofuels market.
Meanwhile, Robert Zoelick has plenty of explaining to do about why it took a leak to bring this important study to light.
The Informal Economy: Michael Jackson Edition
Ask Umbra on green moving companies
Et tu, Al? Franken gulps the ethanol-spiked Kool-Aid
Comments
View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 4:44 pm
05 Jul 2008
Hey Tom
Speaking of "relatively" secret.
Got a David Fridley speachified presentation video for ya.
http://video.google.com/?docid=287398391460321023
FINALLY got around to ripping it, re-encoding it, and uploading it.
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:45 pm
05 Jul 2008
Meh, Bad link
Thar better.
The title of the presentation is:
Myths of BioFuels
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=28739839146032102 ...
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justlou Posted 10:20 pm
05 Jul 2008
Percentages Hard to Pinpoint
Tom, we can argue till the cows come home about an accurate measure of the effect of biofuels on food prices. But the 3% figure provided by the ethanol industry is obviously deliberately flawed. Their repetitive use of such lies and propaganda reveals the weakness of their arguments as a defensive backlash.
Food prices are being impacted by several major factors which are interconnected in global feedback loops -- the price of commodities, petroleum prices, mandated demand for biofuels, increased demand for meat in some developing countries as well as our own over consumption of meats, costs of production including rapidly rising fertilizer prices, climate and weather, transportation, hoarding of commodities, speculation, perceptions of shortages, and overall economic conditions. Placing an exact measure for any particular factor would be difficult to isolate due to all these interacting factors and feedbacks. The timing of the big increase in ethanol production just prior to the big increases in corn and soybean prices does tend to put a big target on the ethanol industry.
What is very troubling is that there seems to be an inflationary spiral at work here capable of growing out of control and that globalization has set the stage for this spiral to spin even faster by temporarily masking limits to growth via global trade, promoting rapid and unsustainable growth, giving us a false sense of security, and stalling preventative measures like reducing our demand for oil (see "American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot", http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/business/06oil.html?8dp ... ).
We are bumping against economic signs of a reckoning with the realities of living on earth as an alien culture. Rising prices only point toward much deeper problems with our delusional way of living.
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Jonas Posted 11:34 pm
05 Jul 2008
Why don't we stick to science?
So far, there has been only non-ideologically burdened assessment of the contribution of biofuels. The report was produced by the Wageningen University (the world's leading agricultural economics institution).
It concluded that the contribution of biofuels has been "marginal". No overall percentage, because the picture is rather complex.
But "marginal" is a pretty straightforward word.
Wageningen UR: biofuels not to blame for high food prices; decline in world food prices to continue -
June 17, 2008
I don't trust either the left or the right on this.
-The left says: "resisting biofuels is like commiting a crime against the world's poor".
-The right says: "producing biofuels is a crime against humanity".
It's not a good debate.
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Jonas Posted 11:43 pm
05 Jul 2008
Let the South go it alone
I think the developing countries - who have been attacked by the World Bank - should do things alone and stop looking at the EU and the US for biofuels exports. These countries should sell to China and India and other 'emerging' economies.
Let the US and Europe develop electric cars. Let the South benefit from the much more economically viable biofuels.
Let's not forget that the World Bank isn't really pleased with the prospect of seeing developing countries grow. Because biofuels represent the biggest economic opportunity in decades for these countries, it is normal to see such an ideologically burdened anti-biofuels report from the Anti-People Bank.
By the way, the report is pretty hilarious. Rice prices have shot up more than 80% in under 5 months time. But no liter of biofuel is made from rice. And there is no evidence whatsoever that countries have scrambled for more rice to replace corn (which was indeed affected by U.S. ethanol).
The report does not make sense. It is written with the agenda to keep the South poor. Most of the research made by the Anti-People's Bank has that agenda in mind.
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:48 am
06 Jul 2008
What about soil and water?
Justlou, I know you just reeled off a lot of reasons, but the long-term problem, from what I understand, is that industrial agricultural techniques destroy soil and water. If that's the case -- and grain reserves and output have been stagnating or declining for a while -- then we have a long-term production problem, on top of all of the other factors.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:00 am
06 Jul 2008
Shhhh
Another big secret. Ethanol doubles GHG.
Unless mass delusional media flogs a point to death, it's a secret from low information (swing) voters.
Mass media is still stuck on the clean, green fuel farming message. How do we get the secrets through?
Oh and it has tripled the price of fertilizer. And chemical fertilizer emits nitrous oxide, producing as much GHG effect as 2/3 of the CO2 the crop absorbs.
Mass delusional media and politics run on open secrets.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Ron Steenblik Posted 2:10 am
06 Jul 2008
Jona, have you actually SEEN the WB report?
If you had, I doubt you would have written:
I have seen the report, and it is written with no agenda other than to try to identify the relative importance of the different factors that have contributed to the 140% rise in the World Bank's index of food prices between January 2002 and February 2008.
You will see once (if) Don Mitchell's draft (8 April 2008) report ever becomes public that it is well researched. It appears to have been an input to the World Bank's public document, "Rising food prices: Policy options and World Bank response" [140 kb PDF], which was released on 11 April 2008.
Some information about the report was already leaked in May. Asbjørn Eide, in a report for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations titled The right to food and the impact of liquid biofuels (agrofuels)" [620 kb PDF], for example, wrote:
The World Bank, in its 11 April report, explains further:
Mitchell's analysis, in other words, isolates the various factors, and asks first how the markets for grains and oilseeds would have coped with those largely beyond governments' control -- namely, rising population, shifting preference for animal products, drought in some countries (and good harvests in others), rising oil prices and consequent knock-on effects on fertilizer prices. The rest he attributes to biofuels and the related consequences. Those related consequences include declining grain stocks, major land-use shifts, speculative activity and export bans.
Is it fair to attribute those "related consequences" to the surge in the use of crops for biofuels? In my personal opinion, yes. Had there been no diversion of crops to biofuels, the markets simply would have been calmer, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that speculation would have been modest, and fewer if any countries would have decided to impose export bans. Biofuels were the new factor, largely driven by policies. Everything else (yes, even the fact that in any given year there will probably be a drought somewhere), except perhaps the fall in the value of the U.S. dollar, had been anticipated.
What is interesting is the change in tone between the WB's 11 April document, "Rising food prices: Policy options and World Bank response" and the open letter [40 kb PDF], dated 1 July 2008, that the President of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick sent to the Prime Minister of Japan, who is hosting Monday's Group of Eight (G8) Summit. The 11 April document makes no specific recommendation on biofuels, and merely states, "Trade-offs between energy security, climate change and food security objectives need to be carefully monitored and integrated into both food and bio-fuel policy actions." By contrast, Zoellick's letter (finally) steps into the breach, albeit tentatively:
People need to understand the that there are two different approaches to measuring changes in food prices. People also need to look beyond average values and consider the distributional impacts.
The basis for comparison for the World Bank's work on food prices estimates is its index of food prices, which is an export value weighted dollar index of developing-country prices of export food crops. That is to say, its basis (as is IFPRI's and several other recent reports on food prices) is the prices of unprocessed commodities.
When the U.S. Administration talks about food prices, it is referring to changes in the consumer price index (CPI) for food, which is a measure of household expenditure on food (but not beer and wine), including restaurant meals, which have a 45% weighting in the Food-CPI. Of the 55% not spent in restaurants, a large amount of the cost relates to processing, packaging, transport and retail margins. Hence it is not surprising that various economists (e.g., U. of Nebraska's Richard Perrin) might find that biofuel policies have increased household expenditure on food by "only" 1 or 2 percent. But 1-2% of $1.1 trillion is still an increase in household food expenditure of $11 to $22 billion per year.
Now apply the same approach to the world. Assume, roughly, that annual per capita expenditure for the richest 1 billion people in the world is $4,000 (i.e., the same as in the United States); for the middle 3 billion people it is $1,600; and for the poorest 2.5 billion people it is $400 (55% of the expenditure of people living on $2 per person per day). That implies total global household expenditure on food of $9.8 trillion per year. If biofuel policies increased that expenditure by "only" 3%, as asserted by some analysts, that is still a staggering $294 billion per year.
Now, divide up that cost according to population (a fair starting assumption, given that at root of the food crisis is the increase in the cost of grains and oils, expenditure on which is more proportional to population than income), then how do the average increases play out by country grouping? My rough calculations show something like the following:
High-income consumers ... 1%
Mid-income consumers .... 3%
Low-income consumers .... 11%
That 11% is an average increase for the poorest 40% of the world's population. If one thinks of the really poor, some of which were already spending two-thirds of their income on food before the price increases, a 11% increase in their food bill (on top of increases caused by higher oil prices, and increases in demand for grains for food and feed), that is significant. It can make the difference between barely adequate nutrition and malnutrition or worse.
P.S., As for Wageningen, as with any institution, it does both good research and less-good research. In any case, I would think that economists at Iowa State University, Pennsylvania State University, U. of California-Davis, Cornell University, Purdue University and a whole host of other agricultural universities might agree that Wageningen is AMONG the world's leading agricultural economics institutions, but not that it is THE world's leading agricultural economics institution.
These are only my personal opinions.
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:23 am
06 Jul 2008
Ron, can you turn this into a post?
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amazingdrx Posted 2:47 am
06 Jul 2008
Grist media/science conference
Could Grist maybe organize a media conference, maybe even online, where TV producers and jouralists meet scientists and researchers?
Maybe with Gore, Lester, Amory, Ed, .. and others speaking? Would the enviro orgs like Sierra and NRDC maybe kick in for something like this? Even after all the bad things we say about them here in the blog? They don't read it, do they? hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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amazingdrx Posted 2:51 am
06 Jul 2008
A nice projection
Of the latest blog entries could be displayed on the wall at the conference and on a streaming video feed.
That way we could (torment) communicate with the mass delusional media from cyberspace, in REAL time! Mwhahahahaha
They could join in from their laptops.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jonas Posted 4:14 am
06 Jul 2008
Ron and Rynn, some objectivity please
Please also include the Wageningen University report.
It is the most authoritative to date on rising food prices, written by researchers from the world's most authoritative agricultural science organisation. And it is also the least ideologically burdened (let's not forget that the World Bank does have a well known agenda, as have the other organisations that have produced similar reports.)
But apparently nobody cares about objectivity and scientific rigor any longer in this dead end debate.
It makes me wonder why Gristmill does jump on this World Bank report but hasn't mentioned Wageningen's once?
@Ron, since the report isn't public, anyone can write whatever he wants about its context (namely that it was written for the World Bank, one of the world's most problematic and dangerous institutions, with a horrible track record in development history.)
So if you do the post, please include the Wageningen study.
Here's the widely distributed press release (even though none of right wing media used it, only some left-wing blogs like my own):
And the actual report:
Why are current world food prices so high?
Authors: M. Banse, P. Nowicki, H. van Meijl
Den Haag, LEI, 2008, Rapport 2008-040; ISBN
Reason must rule.
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Bart Anderson Posted 8:12 am
06 Jul 2008
The Wageningen report
The Wageningen report is interesting and worth reading. The press release is more tendentious and not especially informative.
The report doesn't seem to me particularly authoritative. It's based on talks with some experts, existing literature and the authors' own research. In other words, it's more like a white paper for policymakers rather than anything deep or original.
The report is ideological, reflecting as it does the thinking of agricultural economists in the developed world. (My guess is that the ideology is not that different from the World Bank - that's what makes the leaked report from the World Bank so surprising.)
The authors of the report have a definite program and set of values, for example:
- Not particularly interested in soil health or ecological issues.
- Committed to the world market as a cure-all for hunger and agricultural issues.
- Ignore differences between industrial agriculture and small-scale agriculture.
- Open to occasional intervention to prevent starvation and hardship (though they oppose government intervention in general).
For a different perspective, see the work of people in the food sovereignty movement, which claims The key point of the Wageningen report (downplayed in the press release) is the interlocking factors of food and energy. If one assumes that fuel prices ARE going to rise long-term, as many do, then the food vs biofuel conflict will only get worse.Elsewhere, the report says :
andBart
Energy Bulletin
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Ron Steenblik Posted 8:16 am
06 Jul 2008
That's rich, Jonas
I'll leave it to other readers to judge my own objectivity, buy I fail to see what Jon Rynn said in this string that is the least bit subjective.
Regarding the Wageningen report, it is one among many. Had my post claimed to be a literature review, I might have been remiss in not referring to it. But my post was in response to the discussion of the so-called "secret World Bank report", not a general discussion of all the reports that have investigated the link between biofuels and food prices. I could equally demand of you that every time you write about biofuels that you mention, and include a link to, the studies by the Global Subsidies Initiative.
Objectivity, Jonas, in my view means judging work on its merits, and not claiming higher authority for the authors because they happen to work at Wageningen, or Moscow State University, or Universität Tübingen, or wherever. Similarly, it is highly subjective of you to dismiss out of hand a piece of analysis that you have not even seen simply because it was done by somebody who works for the World Bank, which you seem to regard as the institutionalization of all evil. You should learn to keep your feelings for an institution separate from the individuals who work for it.
As for the study by Martin Banse et al. (2008), a lot of it concerns long-term trends. Their analysis of short-term trends is written in a rather telegraphic style, and does not assign values to the individual factors.
I wonder, also, if they fully understand what drives the derived demand for biofuel feedstocks. They assert, for example, that:
But since they don't provide a list of references, I cannot verify that. Do they understand the full extent of the subsidies for biofuels, and the fact that until mandated volumes are filled, biofuel producers can outbid other buyers of the feedstock? They also speak of the poor economics of producing biodiesel in the United States. Are they aware of the phenomenon of "splash and dash"?
The fundamental difference between Don Mitchell's analysis and that by others, which is what makes it interesting, is, as I mentioned earlier, that he asks what would have happened to prices in the absence of grain- and oilseed-based biofuels, and then considers biofuels as the residual factor. Others, essentially, take a particular starting date and then treat each factor contributing to rising demand for grains and oilseeds from then on as having a weight in the price rises proportional to their added volume.
These are only my personal opinions.
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:44 am
06 Jul 2008
Nonsensical
America's biggest biofuel proponent is uncurious George, followed closely by Khosla, also a lifelong Republican.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:54 am
06 Jul 2008
Great link, Grey
The epiphany everyone should take away from that video is that there is no "rush" to replace liquid fuels with biofuels. The rush is to increase mileage (efficiency).
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Jon Rynn Posted 10:39 am
06 Jul 2008
So just keep throwing more oil on the land?
It sounds to me like the Wageningen report is a typical industrial agriculture type report, that is, the answer is to destroy yet more soil and deplete yet more freshwater resources. Get more grains per acre or hectare, dumping pesticides and artificial fertilizer until ... oops! It's a desert! Oh well, we can always go for all of that "unutilized" land, you know, the rainforests, etc.
Biofuels are throwing oil (I guess pun intended) on the fire of soil and water depletion (I guess this is my subjective comment). The underlying, fundamental problem is soil and water. small-scale, food for a small planet-type farming, permaculture, biointensive, these techniques build up the soil and save on water.
And Jonas, we've been through this, there is a big difference between indigenous peoples sustainably harvesting biomass for things like direct electricity generation, and huge multinational agribusiness destroying whole ecosystems (and not giving anything back to the colonized).
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freewin Posted 12:24 pm
06 Jul 2008
soil depletion
I read somewheres that it takes 100 years to create an inch of topsoil.
And we want to grow fuel so we can drive to the supermarket and buy increasingly higher priced food.
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WWAGD?! Posted 2:54 am
07 Jul 2008
Prime Directive
If the Greens would stop interfering with the human ecosystem, everything would be fine.
Look, every time a country industrializes, it creates fewer and more prosperous people. The faster we get the more backward people (those who don't live in Seattle or New York) to get higher incomes and start living in city condos and not having a kid until they're 42 (and only one at that), the faster we can all stop worrying about all the other stuff.
Eventually the world will be made up of 500 million weight conscious guppies (Green Yuppies) who's most pressing concern is reading Grist to see what the latest Prius accessory is.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:38 am
07 Jul 2008
John Bailo
To what does your comment relate in this string, pray tell?
These are only my personal opinions.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:27 am
07 Jul 2008
What Prius accessory?
...oops, I don't have a Prius...but what about Chicago, Bailo?
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1Eco Posted 1:28 pm
07 Jul 2008
Try transportation costs
Driving up the price on everything other than U.S. Real Estate.
Not all feedstocks are equal. In fact biofuels can be made from biomass and soon will be, if I have my guess.
Ecosystems empowerment for the rural poor.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:52 pm
07 Jul 2008
Yeah eco
Biomass in the form of waste. Nano tech methane storage development has reached the density of liquid fuel, at ambient temperature and pressure.
That means biogas (methane) or natural gas can be substituted for gasoline and diesel.
Biogas can be made from coal too. Underground with no mining, just by injecting natural bacteria.
The natural gas we presently use for heating can be replaced with solar PV/heat cogeneration and ground source heat pumps.
The danger is that gas guzzling will continue, as natural gas is only $1 per gallon of gas equivalent. Plugin hybrids should compliment these other changes to make the price of natural gas stabilize.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:07 pm
07 Jul 2008
Biofuels not affecting land prices?
1Eco writes:
Not true. Here are the results of the 2007 Iowa Land Value Survey [130 kb PDF] of farmland values in the State of Iowa:
Year $/acre % change
1999 ... 1,781 ... -1.1
2000 ... 1,857 ... 4.3
2001 ... 1,926 ... 3.7
2002 ... 2,083 ... 8.2
2003 ... 2,275 ... 9.2
2004 ... 2,629 ... 15.1
2005 ... 2,914 ... 10.8
2006 ... 3,204 ... 10.0
2007 ... 3,908 ... 22.0
Farmland values in the center of the corn belt doubled between 2001 and 2007, increasing by a whopping 22% between 2006 and 2007. Has your land increased in value so quickly?
These high land values are the results of expectations of higher returns from farming -- in this case, higher returns that are to a large extent the result of policy. This is why production-linked policies (as opposed to payments for environmental improvements), such as those supporting biofuels, are so difficult to change once they have become established: the rents (money earned above the normal returns to factors of production) become capitalized into the value of fixed assets, in this case land.
If the support for corn-ethanol and soy-biodiesel were to be suddenly ended, land prices would fall, and some of those farmers who borrowed heavily using the value of their land as collateral could run into financial trouble.
These are only my personal opinions.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 8:08 pm
07 Jul 2008
More on land values
There are something like 31.5 million acres of farmland in Iowa. That means that in the course of two years, some $30 billion (in dollars of 2005) was added to the value of farmland in that one state alone. (Illinois, another corn-producing state, has almost as much farmland as Iowa.) Very little of that increase has anything to do with improvements to the land (e.g., grading, drainage, irrigation) or in roads or other infrastructure providing access to it.
If you need an explanation for why farm subsidies, and biofuel support policies in particular, can so easily become entrenched, all you have to do is cite that one figure.
These are only my personal opinions.
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John former Marine Posted 10:28 pm
07 Jul 2008
I know where you can get cheap farmland....
But it's growing zone 3B. Aroostook County, Maine...it's the end of the line. It's a long way to any markets so you're pretty much farming for yourself. But decent farmland up there ranges from $200 to $1000 an acre if you buy in bulk. You can buy a whole kingdom for less than it will cost you for a condo in NYC. Taxes on 100 acres might be $400 a year. It's cold though...at least for the next couple of years. But if you get yourself a good wood stove, life can be good. One of you must have some money...start a good telecommuting business up near Fort Kent...I'll be your first employee.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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timbuktu Posted 7:30 am
08 Jul 2008
Environmental Impact
Of course, all of this debate is about whether biofuels are hurting food prices, and thus the poor. But regardless of the outcome of this debate, biofuels remain a potentially harmful energy source, if only for the environmental degradation they can cause. The demand for efficient production leads to unsustainable agricultural practices, as well as the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides. See article on the dangers of biofuel production: http://www.brightfuture.us/new.
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Amber Pearson Posted 7:49 am
08 Jul 2008
World Bank Refutes Guardian Article on Biofuels
The Guardian had it wrong. So says the Wall Street Journal, which reports today that the study blaming biofuels for the increase in food prices was nothing more than a working paper meant to contribute to a World Bank position paper on food prices. The World Bank is now on record refuting that this unfinished paper reflects its position on biofuels.
Read the Wall Street Journal article: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/07/07/bad- ... .
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Ron Steenblik Posted 11:28 am
08 Jul 2008
On the WB "refuting" Guardian article
Amber Pearson writes:
The WSJ is right, to the best of my knowledge. But "refute" is Ms. Pearson's interpretation. The phrasing I would use is "The World Bank is on record saying that Mitchell's draft paper does not necessarily reflect its position on the contribution of biofuels to food prices", which would be more in keeping with the author's first footnote (there from the beginning), which states that "The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and should not be attributed to the World Bank or its Executive Directors." That is a standard caveat in these kinds of staff analyses.
But, of course, it does not mean that the analysis is any less valid for it.
These are only my personal opinions.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 12:13 pm
08 Jul 2008
WB redux
From Malaysia New.Net:
If the above is an accurate reflection of what Mr. Zoellick said, it doesn't sound like much of a refutation to me!
These are only my personal opinions.
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:51 pm
08 Jul 2008
Thanks for the link, Amber
And thanks for using your real name. Science requires iteration. The 75% number may not hold up under peer review any better than the 3% impact claimed by the USDA. Looking more like 20-25%, which is huge.
Are you seeking the truth or just doing your job?
"Amber is the Communications Specialist for the National Biodiesel Board. Amber's primary role is public relations efforts such as media relations.
http://www.biodiesel.org/aboutnbb/whoarewe/staff.shtm
Reality gets pretty slippery when there is an incentive for it to do so.
"It is difficult to get a man [or woman] to understand something when his [or her] salary depends upon his [or her] not understanding it." --Upton Sinclair
Biodiesel made from soy also uses four times more land than even corn ethanol, is destroying biodiversity and increasing global warming via crop displacement, all for what again? Certainly, increasing liquid fuel supplies 2% isn't going to make us safe from our numerous enemies. I suspect it is a combination of good intentions paving the road to hell and a way to buy votes using fellow citizens hard earned money to line the pockets of American farmers and industrial agriculture lobbyists.
I lifted the WSJ piece to highlight some things:
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 12:55 pm
08 Jul 2008
It's clear
Our side has the best spokespersons, and they work for free. A coincidence? I'm starting to wonder. It's a tough room Amber. Come on back and mix it up, hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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persimmon Posted 1:58 pm
08 Jul 2008
point?
I don't really see the point in arguing any of this. The fact is we need to innovate ourselves out of this whole mess. No one can argue we don't need to rely less on oil. Today's biofuels are not the answer and are by no means perfect, but we're getting there and if we pull funding now we'll be in an even bigger mess. This also goes for solar and wind and electric cars and every other alternative option.
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:08 pm
08 Jul 2008
Counterpoint
Wind and solar do not destroy carbon sinks, biodiversity or increase GHG.
Soy, rapeseed, and palm biodiesel are not innovative, they are centuries old.
That's the problem with letting government invest billions in carbon sequestration, hydrogen filling stations, nuclear power, or food based biofuels. When the public finally realizes they have been screwed it is too late to back out because people with jobs to lose fight tooth and nail to keep them, understandably.
We may not be bright enough to pull this off.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Ron Steenblik Posted 3:52 pm
08 Jul 2008
Getting us where?!
Persimmon writes:
We're getting where? The dominant biodiesel technology, transesterfication (essentially, large-scale kitchen chemistry: mix a fat or oil with an alchohol in the presence of a catalyst), is well understood. And as long as it relies on conventional vegetable oils it is not scalable without either affecting food supplies or creating demand for new croplands (and all the consequences for biodiversity and disturbance of carbon sinks).
Many people are excited about the prospect of obtaining oils from micro-algae. But the technology is still experimental. Good luck is all I can say. But I fail to see how the current $1.00/gallon federal tax credit (plus a new $0.75/gallon state subsidy in Pennsylvania and a $1.00/gallon state subsidy in Kentucky, to name just two examples) is helping that technology along. The challenge for micro-algae lies not with the technology for turning the plant oil into biodiesel but in growing and harvesting the oil from the algae on a large scale.
Meanwhile, the $1.00 federal tax credit is providing a nice income for somebody. Last year, for example, the United States exported 1 million metric tonnes of biodiesel exports to Europe, at a cost to the U.S. Treasury of around $300 million. This year, the bill could be even higher.
Where that has gotten us is into a budding trade dispute with the European Commission.
These are only my personal opinions.
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Biodiversivist Posted 4:15 am
17 Nov 2008
What's with these porn spammers? They're all
over the blog.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Whiskerfish Posted 6:05 am
17 Nov 2008
biofuels are...
...driving large-scale land theft, deforestation and unsustainable water use in Africa.
Highly efficient cellulosic or '3rd generation' biofuels (presuming such things come to pass) are not likely to change this -- they are simply likely to make land theft, deforestation and unsustainable water use more profitable, and hence more widespread.
People like Jonas can carry on sticking their heads in the sand, or they can wake up and smell the last wildlands of Africa burning to feed this madness. Biofuels are not a chance for the 'South' to get rich. They are merely another excuse for corrupt Third World elites and their multinational enablers to screw the poor out of their most valuable asset, their land.
Simple.
Whiskerfish in Africa
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