Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Is it too late to stop the ethanol con job?
September 14, 2007 at 6:27 AM EDT

ROME — Not so long ago, you could feel complacent - smug even - about
your little greenish exertions. You traded your SUV for a smaller set of
wheels. You bought compact florescent bulbs and dragged the old push mower
out of storage. You approved of ethanol and other biofuels and vowed to buy
them whenever possible. Okay, there wasn't a lot of sacrifice involved. But
you could feel a tad superior to your fossil-fuel-slurping neighbours.

You might feel a little less smug today. You might even feel guilty. Why?
Because biofuels aren't living up to their hype. By now, it's obvious they
won't cure the planet of its oil addiction or take the edge off global
warming - two of the alleged advantages touted by the biofuel industry.
Biofuels may even be harming the planet. The oil industry was never keen on
biofuels, but you never believed the oil industry. Now no less a sober
authority than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
says biofuels - notably ethanol, a fuel worshipped by governments, farmers
and refiners in Canada, the United States and parts of Europe - might be a
con job on a massive scale.

An OECD report released this week said biofuels may "offer a cure that is
worse than the disease they seek to heal." It said the vast amounts of land
devoted to biofuel production harms biodiversity and pollutes the
environment with herbicides and pesticides. (A July report put out by the
OECD and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said rising biofuel
demand is "underpinning higher agriculture prices" and will lead to a
"food-versus-fuel" debate).

The OECD recommended that governments "cease to create new mandates for
biofuels and investigate ways to phase them out." It recommended oil
conservation instead of "subsidizing inefficient new sources of [biofuels]
supply."

None of the OECD's musings, of course, is new. A small army of scientists
and environmentalists has warned for years that ethanol, especially of the
corn-based variety so popular in North America, is, at best, misleading
advertising, at worst, a crime against nature and taxpayers alike.

The warnings were simply buried by the endless propaganda peddled by the
ethanol movement and its slick lobbyists and PR men. To be against ethanol
was to be against farmers, un-green and unpatriotic. Less ethanol meant
more foreign oil, and no one wanted that.

Still the OECD report is welcome. But will it tip the balance against
ethanol? Forget it. Big Ethanol, like Big Oil and the big defence
contractors, is so well entrenched, so well organized and financed, that it
will roll over your farmland and your forests like an Abrams tank.

In the U.S., the ethanol business soaks up billions of dollars in subsidies
every year. At last count, there were no fewer than 123 ethanol plants on
the U.S. map, with another 75 or so in the works. The plants are getting
bigger, with some capable of producing 100 million gallons a year (like the
cynically named Patriot Renewable Fuels factory in Illinois' Cornhusker
territory). If the subsidies weren't enough, the Americans slap an import
tariff of 53 cents (U.S.) a gallon on Brazilian ethanol, which is made from
sugar cane and can be produced more cheaply than American ethanol.

Canada has become subsidy-mad too. Manitoba, for example, is offering
production incentives of 20 cents (Canadian) a litre for producers. Even
better (for the ethanol industry) are the provincial and national ethanol
content mandates. Manitoba passed a law requiring that 85 per cent of the
gasoline sold within the province contain 10-per-cent ethanol. Ontario's
requirement is 5 per cent, rising to 10 per cent in a few years. A national
program that will require a 5-per-cent blend is to come into effect in
2010. If all this weren't enough, the feds and Ontario exempt ethanol from
fuel taxes.

Europe is no ethanol slouch either, though wheat, sugar and straw are more
popular raw materials than corn. Plants are being built and the European
Union wants biofuels of every description to have a 5.75-per-cent share of
the transportation fuel market by 2010. Canadian-style tax breaks and
obligatory blending are coming into force.

Once given, incentives such has tax breaks are hard to take away. The
ethanol industry would collapse overnight without them, putting farmers and
refiners out of business, costing jobs and alienating voters. Sadly, the
ethanol industry is here to stay, whether taxpayers on both sides of the
Atlantic want it or not. This is Soviet-style central planning at its very
worst. If ethanol were good for consumers and good for the planet,
consumers wouldn't be forced to pay for it through their taxes and forced
to buy it through legislation. If you want to impress your neighbours with
your green credentials, vote for politicians - if you can find one - who
vow to kill the ethanol industry.