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This week's Time Magazine had a graphic "sound
bite" that said:
1) The US is the world's largest producer of corn
and soybeans.
2) If 100% of that current production was converted
to ethanol, it would cover 11% of our fuel usage.
Why would anyone need any more than that to be
convinced?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 10:55
AM
Subject: [Livingontheland] The Case of
Ethanol as Motor Fuel
April 24, 2007
POLITICIANS MAKING FOOLS OF US
ALL
The Case of Ethanol as Motor Fuel
John
Chuckman
Ethanol has always been a poor choice as a fuel, but the
scientific and
economic considerations behind that statement don't stop
politicians from
claiming otherwise.
American use of ethanol blended
into gasoline actually represents a hidden
subsidy to corn farmers, a
subsidy on top of other subsidies, because
American corn production itself
has long been subsidized. The American
program, to be expanded now by a
leader widely recognized for wisdom and
insight, George Bush, subsidizes
farmers hurt by the abundance of their own
subsidized production.
Subsidies plus the extent of Midwestern farmland suitable for
its
production are why America produces such an abundance of corn. Its use
in
motor fuel on any scale started as a way to stretch America's fuel
supply
in the face of Arab anger over foreign policy.
But it does
not really do this. Although numbers naturally change over
time, ethanol
has roughly 70% the energy content of gasoline, yet it costs
about 40% more
to produce and distribute. In order to deliver this economic
bargain to
motorists, the government forgoes taxes paid by the users of
gasoline,
taxes which, of course, pay for important government services.
You
don't need to study economics to appreciate that as a bad bargain.
In
the years since the original strategic argument, arguments for the use
of
ethanol in fuel have developed around its being a benefit to
the
environment. It is no surprise that many embrace this at first
hearing:
growing something for fuel just sounds cleaner and healthier than
using a
minerals dug out of the ground.
But this is a false
argument, false at several levels. If you have a
certain distance to drive,
requiring a certain amount of energy, you will
have to fuel up more often,
and you will be paying the same or more for
this privilege with ethanol as
part of each fill-up.
The motorist, re-fueling his or her car, will not
be aware that significant
amounts of petroleum products go into growing
corn before any fuel is
manufactured. Tractors, harvesters, trucks, and
conveyor belts don't run on
alcohol, and agricultural chemicals aren't
derived from it.
It will be the furthest thing from the motorist's
mind that ethanol for
fuel cannot be shipped by pipeline, the cheapest form
of shipping liquids
and gases, because ethanol picks up water on it way
underground, so ethanol
must use more expensive truck transport, and what
do the trucks run on?
The motorist also likely will not be aware that
while burning some ethanol
with gasoline reduces carbon dioxide emissions,
if you account for the
carbon dioxide emissions of the corn's production,
there is almost no net
gain.
A recent, published finding that
ethanol increases ozone in the lower
atmosphere is also unlikely to drift
through his or her thoughts while
squeezing the pump handle. Ozone is a
constituent of smog which affects
those with respiratory problems.
Ironically, ozone in the lower atmosphere
is itself a greenhouse
gas.
Now, corn is a staple food for many poor people, especially
throughout the
Americas, and it is a simple matter of supply and demand
that if large
quantities of corn go to fuel, poor Mexicans and others will
be eating less
because its bounty in the food supply will drop. In very
small quantities,
this effect is almost invisible, but in large quantities
- and what is the
use of such programs if they do not become large? - it
will become
painfully obvious.
Canada's Conservative government , a
government whose previous
environmental minister became an international
embarrassment to the
country, is in a desperate search for some
environmental goodness to smear
on its face as political war-paint and has
discovered the mumbo-jumbo of
ethanol.
Recently, it has run a
television ad, over and over, done in fake cinema
verité style showing
vignettes of an odd little man with the sardonic
smile of a skull asking
citizens on the street about growing "our own
fuel." It even features a
scene of the would-be comic dancing spontaneously
on the sidewalk with
someone in celebration of growing your own fuel. It
ends with another man
announcing proudly to the astonished little man that
his great hulking SUV
actually uses ethanol. Will wonders never cease?
Why do governments do
this kind of thing? Well, ethanol as fuel allows you
to brag about doing
all kinds of good things - of course, the bragging is
done by stating
partial truths, but isn't that what all advertising is,
partial truth? -
while you dish out a new subsidy to some of your
constituents. And you get
to advertise what you are doing at the expense of
your listeners.
Ethanol-as-fuel's other great attraction is that politicians get to
hide
for a while from the real solutions, such as simply raising
vehicle
efficiency standards, which require some courage. What a sweet
scam.
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