THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 85, April 1, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE WORST MOMENT IN HISTORY TO DEMAND BIOFUELS
By Dennis T. Avery
AGRICULTURE, THE WORLD'S GROWING POPULATION, & THE DEMAND FOR BIOFUELS: THE ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPACT OF GROWING MILLIONS OF ACRES OF CORN & SUGAR CANE FOR ETHANOL & PUTTING IN HUGE PALM OIL
PLANTATIONS FOR BIODIESEL FUEL -- WHAT THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS & THE MEDIA HAVE FAILED TO REVEAL, AS
REGARDS THE RELEASE OF SOIL CARBON INTO THE ATMOSPHERE AS CARBON DIOXIDE -- GOVERNMENTS ALLOWING
THEMSELVES TO BE PRESSURED INTO A BLACK HOLE OF HIGHER FOOD PRICES, LOST FORESTS, & SLAUGHTERED
ENDANGERED SPECIES
FULL STORY:
This is the worst moment in history to demand billions of gallons of biofuels from our farms.
I told the Sustainable Agriculture students at Iowa State University last week:
“Human numbers are still expanding rapidly. With more people
and higher incomes, we’d need to double farm output by 2050,
even without biofuels. . . . Food needs will stabilize and then
decline after 2050, but any wildlife species crowded off the
planet by the huge land requirements of biofuels in the next 40
years will be gone forever.”
Unfortunately, at least three-fourths of the world’s wild species are in the warm tropics, where we’re now going to grow
millions of acres of sugar cane for ethanol and put in huge palm oil plantations for biodiesel.
I told my Iowa audience:
“. . . the Great Plains where we sit today had 60 million bison,
100 million antelope, prairie dogs and an interesting set of
grasses. That isn’t many species, and those species have not
gone extinct. But biofuels threaten thousands of species. Sugar
cane takes less land per gallon of ethanol produced, but it’s
produced on tropic lands with much more biodiversity than the
Great Plains. Indonesia sits at the juncture of two incredibly
species-rich ecosystems, yet we’re clearing it for biodiesel.
Every bit of poor-quality land we sacrifice for biofuels carries
far more species risk than growing high yields on high-quality
land with pesticides, fertilizers and biotech seeds.”
Meanwhile, burning those biofuels worsens the greenhouse gas problem. Two new studies in the journal Science
(T. (Searchinger, 319:1238-40 and J. Fargione, 319: 1235-1238) point out that, if the biofuels are grown on land converted
from forest or grasses, the stored soil carbon gasses off into the air as CO2.
As a result, I explained, corn ethanol is twice as bad for global warming as burning gasoline or diesel. And we are already
using virtually all of the world’s good farmland to produce food and feed. Essentially, all of the cropland for biofuels will
have to come from clearing forests, plowing grasslands, or draining wetlands. This is ecologically criminal.
Biofuels also threaten the whole future of the sustainable farming movement. A world in which food prices have tripled, in
which the World Food Program can’t afford to buy food for the famine-stricken, in which the orangutans and the Sumatran
tiger are being displaced from their tropical forests to grow biodiesel — this is not a world asking how to grow low-yield
crops without pesticides. This is a world that wants higher crop yields.
Why did no one warn us about releasing the soil carbon before U.S. President George W. Bush and the European
Commission installed their mandates for huge amounts of corn ethanol and palm-oil-based biodiesel? Would the biofuel
plants have been built if the Greens and the press had told us the whole truth? And for that matter, why did the
governments allow themselves to be pressured into this black hole of higher food prices, lost forests, slaughtered
endangered species?
The Consumer Federation of America claims that biofuels are lowering gasoline prices, but oil still costs close to $100 per
barrel. We’ve tripled the world price of grain in the past two years, without making any dent in gasoline prices. When we
rule out coal and nuclear energy, (thanks to the Greens) we automatically make gasoline impossibly expensive.
Corn ethanol is showing itself to be a massive error. Now, how will the governments get out of the mandate before world
wildlife disappears for all time?
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Science, Ethics, & Human Health:
Human Health & Public Policy
Human Reproduction, Demographics, & Population Policy
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director for the Center for
Global Food Issues. (www.cgfi.org) He was formerly a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State. He is co-author,
with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years. Readers may write Avery at P.O. Box
202, Churchville, Virginia, 2442. Email address: cgfi@hughes.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity