Solon Economou

There will be blood - in our ethanol

US insane policy threatens to virtually throw the world into chaos

While we on the Cape argue the merits of the proposed Cape Wind farm in Nantucket Sound, our federal government is pushing an insane policy that threatens to virtually throw the world into chaos.

This incredible government boondoggle gives ethanol refiners a 51-cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol produced and places a 54-cent per gallon tariff on cheaper, imported ethanolWe all know what "blood diamonds" have caused in places like Sierra Leone: war, murder, slavery, rape, you name it.  It's hard to believe that something like corn could cause the same kind of strife.  It will with the latest boondoggle created by none other than our own government.

The biofuel craze, specifically the burning of food for fuel, is madness.  Mandates and subsidies in both the United States and Europe for the production of ethanol from corn are, make no mistake, designed to enrich the already rich corn growers and the ethanol refiners. 

These policies are not only driving up the price of food the world over, but are upsetting the global food balance and helping to create shortages that will inevitably lead to wars.  People with empty bellies and starving children have little recourse but to rebel.  Haitian food riots have already made it into our living rooms through TV news.  Food riots and strikes have also taken place in Egypt and West Africa. 

This incredible government boondoggle gives ethanol refiners a 51-cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol produced and places a 54-cent per gallon tariff on cheaper, imported ethanol, such as that made from sugar cane in South America.  (And these geniuses are arguing about tax credits for wind and solar power?)

Last year, one-fifth of U.S. corn production went into ethanol.  This has driven the price of corn to new highs, inflating costs in the entire food industry, which uses corn for bread and to raise livestock, corn syrup to sweeten drinks, etc.  The effects are already trickling down.  I just paid $3.49 for a loaf of sliced Italian bread at Stop & Shop.  Guess why.

In addition, this policy raises the cost of other foods by reducing supply when farm land use is shifted to corn production, leaving less land available for other crops.

Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind, suggests, "Rather than pitting the supermarket against the gas station for corn or other foodstuff-derived biofuel, let's transition to plug-in hybrid cars powered by offshore wind and other renewables.  It would take the pressure off rising food costs... and give you the lowest per mile transportation cost."

Chuck Kleekamp, vice president of Clean Power Now, says, "Ethanol from corn is a vivid lesson in unintended consequences.  The externalities were never realistically addressed by the responsible legislators beholden to lobbyists rather than scientists."  Amen to that.

Right now it takes about the same amount of energy to produce biofuel from corn as the fuel itself produces.  A net zero effect, except the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.  Kleekamp says, "The balance of energy for planting, fertilizer production, irrigation, harvesting, processing, delivering, was never fully examined...at best, thought to be one-to-one."  Kleekamp says biofuel derived from sugar cane, as used in Brazil, is the most efficient, at a one-to-seven ratio of production energy used versus energy produced.

The United States can concentrate on converting other non-food biological substances to biofuel, such as the plentiful switch grass, wood chips, farm waste such as corn stalks, etc.

Rising food costs may be just an inconvenience for some Americans, a hardship for others.  But for the poor the world over, they may be a matter of survival, pure and simple.  To purloin the title of a recent movie about oil, just as with diamonds, and now with corn, "There will be blood."

What can you do about it?  You can write your legislators and hope that they even care to listen.  It is renewable wind and solar power that they should be pushing, not the insane disruption of the world's food supply.