The Pink Flamingo :: Are Bio-fuels Ethical? a Bio-Fuel Primer

There are now endless Henny-Penny reports that the sky is falling
and we are all going to die of starvation.    They are “rationing” rice at Wally-World and Costco. They are rationing rice in Israel.   (same way as here) Napal is cutting off exports of grain. People in underdeveloped countries are truly suffering. The question is: Are bio-fuels to blame or is it that evil global warming?

Or – is all the hype political and designed to help the Dems over the Republicans?   Are there reasonable solutions that may simply involve the way third world countries eat?     Japan is running short of butter.

Are we dealing with a rising cost of fuel because of oil?

Are liberals to blame?

What if the problem is simply the fact that the our level of development – world wide – has reached the point of such affluence, that countries which were marginal a few years ago are now rather prosperous (they have money).

What if George Bush is to blame.

That’s it!

Let’s blame it all on George W. Bush. We blame everything else on him. Let’s blame this on him too. I do think his over-emphasis on bio-fuels hasn’t helped the situation, but that’s not the real problem. The real problem? The problem is the fact that George Bush has encouraged freedom, democracy, and a global free market economy. Evidently he is being rather successful in exporting the American Dream.

Yep, we are paying the price for exporting prosperity, freedom, and democracy!

What a lousy thing to do.   Never mind that we are actually paying the price of being “green”! Let’s face it, we are suffering high gas prices because of global prosperity but also because environmentalists have basically curtailed any rational development of refineries and if you drill for oil it is evil and you will burn in hell!

Liberals like Al Gore love bio-fuels. Environmentalists want us to stop drilling and turn our corn into diesel. We did this. And, like so many more rational minds have predicted, people are starving. Prices are rising, and everyone is bitching and moaning about the high cost of gas.

Thanks a lot Al Gore!

“…The push for ethanol and other biofuels has spawned an industry that depends on billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, and not only in the United States. In 2005, global ethanol production was 9.66 billion gallons, of which Brazil produced 45.2 percent (from sugar cane) and the United States 44.5 percent (from corn). Global production of biodiesel (most of it in Europe), made from oilseeds, was almost one billion gallons.

The industry's growth has meant that a larger and larger share of corn production is being used to feed the huge mills that produce ethanol. According to some estimates, ethanol plants will burn up to half of U.S. domestic corn supplies within a few years. Ethanol demand will bring 2007 inventories of corn to their lowest levels since 1995 (a drought year), even though 2006 yielded the third-largest corn crop on record. Iowa may soon become a net corn importer.

The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops.

This might sound like nirvana to corn producers, but it is hardly that for consumers, especially in poor developing countries, who will be hit with a double shock if both food prices and oil prices stay high. The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world. Biofuels have tied oil and food prices together in ways that could profoundly upset the relationships between food producers, consumers, and nations in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for both global poverty and food security….”

Then there is the fertilizer shortage. Is that where the real problem is? If true, and knowing the little I do know (coming from a simi-agricultural background) this is a very big deal.

“…In one report, Vietnamese subsistence farmers are actually going hungry, because they can’t afford enough fertilizers to feed themselves - the majority of the world’s poor are land poor farmers who grow much of their own food - and who also buy some. And all through the poor world, there’s increasing evidence that energy and input costs are simply eating up the profits:

“‘The profits are not in the hands of the farmers,’ said Vo Tong Xuan, a rice economist and professor in Vietnam. ‘The profits are enjoyed by middlemen and speculators who hoard the rice to sell it at a higher price.’

He worries that the Vietnamese government, bowing to pressure from urban consumers, will order a reduction in rice prices. This would impoverish many farmers, since their costs are still rising, he said.”

Because the profits from agriculture are not reaching farmers, their incentives have to be not some noble goal of “feeding the world” but the bottom line - keeping their families fed and their land going. The article above blames this on export restrictions, which probably don’t help, but the root cause is industrial agriculture’s constant distortion of markets (in the false name of “free” markets) by concentrating agricultural profits into the hands of middlemen, processors and speculators.

Over the last decade, the percentage of profits that farmers worldwide receive on a bushel of grain has plummetted all over the world, while the proportion of inputs need to keep up crop yields has risen. This concentration of wealth has most disproportionately affected small farmers - who provide a majority of the world’s food. Hundreds of millions of small farmers have been displaced into cities, their land nationalized or developed. Reversing that trend will require major systemic alterations.

And it is worth noting that this destruction of small scale agriculture is not an accidental consequence of industrialization, it is intentional. That is, the concentration of wealth into smaller and smaller numbers of hands is the intended result of growth capitalism. We are told, endlessly, that if we just increase productivity and yields a bit more, eventually some of it will leak down to the poor, but, of course, the opposite has occurred - inequity has spiked, and many of the gains of the developing world have come at the cost of working class denizens of the Global North, as analysis after analysis suggests. That is, the industrial system *works* in part by displacing farmers into cities, and paving agricultural land, and by impoverishing farmers. It is not at all clear that a system in which they were enriched, or even just paid fairly, would work.

And while there is no absolute shortage of food, there are actual shortfalls of fertilizer availability - and fertilizers are the lifeblood of the industrial system we’ve created, remember? Again, at this point, there is not yet an absolute shortage - but the chances of any resource ever being 100% equitably distributed is pretty much nil - and less when its distribution is controlled by market forces whose primary goal is not equity, but profit….”

ON BIOFUELS
The other day The Anchoress mentioned the fact that she thinks bio-fuels are unethical. I see Captain Ed at Hot Air has picked up the clarion call on the same issue. He quotes a USA Today piece about bio fuels. Why Ethanol backfires: Hyscience has more. Evidently the planet is more important than the people, if you believe environmentalists.

“…Professor Runge and a colleague said in a 2007 research paper that “the enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system.”
They noted that the United States produces about 40 percent of the world’s corn supply, which last year was selling at record levels established by the ethanol boom.
“The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating.
“Filling a 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn - which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year.”
If you couple this with the politically correct U.S. policy of continued dependence on foreign oil - rather than cheaper production from American oil fields - the effect could be catastrophic. Rising oil prices have pushed the price of all consumer goods higher and higher, as the cost of distribution for all products has increased along with fuel prices.
This is the inconvenient truth of Gore’s global-warming scare - all occurring at the same time as evidence is growing that global warming is due to natural cycles rather than made-made causes.
If this trend continues - and there is no reason to believe that it won’t - Professor Runge’s concern of “devastating” consequences could prove sadly profound next year.
Until recently, the global-warming scare and a lack of sensible U.S. energy policy has been a relatively benign political sideshow.
But when starving people begin rioting in the streets of underdeveloped countries, and well-fed people in rich nations begin rebelling against the avoidable increase in the costs of food and other consumer goods, the “inconvenient truth” might be that people die and political systems are upended….”

There is an extensive article on the subject on Earthfiles.

“…I took that question to Colin Carter, Ph.D., Prof. of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California – Davis. Prof. Carter received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the Univ. of California – Berkeley in 1980 and has spoken before Congressional committees on agricultural economy issues. A year ago in the May 17, 2007 issue of the Los Angeles Times, he co-authored an Opinion piece entitled, “Why Ethanol Backfires.” [ See Websites below.] The article begins: “Policymakers and legislators often fail to consider the law of unintended consequences. The latest example is their attempt to reduce the United States' dependence on imported oil by shifting a big share of the nation's largest crop, corn, to the production of ethanol for fueling automobiles.

President Bush has set a target of replacing 15% of domestic gasoline use with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) over the next 10 years, which would require almost a fivefold increase in mandatory biofuel use, to about 35 billion gallons. With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no feasible alternative. However, achieving the 15% goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40% of the world's corn supply. This would do more than create mere market distortions; the irresistible pressure to divert corn from food to fuel would create unprecedented turmoil.

...it would make far more sense to import ethanol from Brazil and other countries that can produce it efficiently (from sugar cane and corn) - and also to remove the 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol imports.”

So, I asked Prof. Carter if it were correct to focus on the ethanol policy in the U.S., which is increasing the amount of American soil devoted to ethanol production instead of food, as perhaps the cause of dominoes falling in grain seed shortages, higher food prices and a growing international food crisis in poor countries?...”

According to Grizzly Ground-swell, the bio-fuels are causing serious damage. People are starving.

“…And the way it's coming out, the proponents of biofuels are to blame. Period. Elizabeth Stuart, a spokesman for the Oxfam anti-poverty group has said, "’Half of the increase in the demand for major food crops was due to the move to biofuels,’ she said. ‘These have dubious environment benefits, and by driving up prices, are crippling the lives of the poor. ... The [World] Bank, with other international institutions and the G7, must come up with a joint plan to tackle this crisis.’”

Even the U.N.'s Right To Food independent expert Jean Ziegler has called for the five year moratorium on biofuel production to come to a halt as the growing practice of converting food crops into biofuels is "a crime against humanity.'' I normally don't put much stock in the U.N. But when it involves humanitarian problems, I at least lend ear to it. Then make my decisions.

Not only is it the subsidization of corn (and other food staples such as wheat, sugarcane, rice, etc.,) to be used for biofuels that's hurting the poverty stricken areas. But the increased fuel and energy costs to simply deliver it has added to the burden. Lawrence Kudlow (a former Reagan economic advisor) has said, “…The continued decline in the value of the dollar … has permitted the global commodities boom (energy and corn) to leak into higher U.S. inflation. Bulging commodity costs have depressed the profits of non-financial domestic businesses...”…”

“…International agriculture researchers warned that farmers will need to double global food production by 2030 to meet rising demand, and said countries should impose a moratorium on grain-based ethanol and biodiesel to rein in skyrocketing prices for corn, rice, soybeans and wheat….”

IS IT ALL POLITICAL
J. R. Dunn at American Thinker says it is all political. I think we are dealing with a perfect storm. In other words it is an election year and the Dems want more power. According to PJer Stephen Green, the Rice Shortage may be more hype than reality. In other words, we are dealing with the ramifications of out of control environmentalists. We are dealing with rising costs to produce food products. There is a shortage of fertilizer. We are dealing with drought. And we are dealing with Democrats. Let’s face it, the Dems are the most dangerous portion of the whole equation.

Let’s just take the easy way out and blame it all on George W. Bush. Wait a minute, the real problem is Barbara Bush. She allowed him to be born! It’s Barbara’s fault.

Seriously, the bottom line here is simple. The Democrats and their friends in the MSM DO NOT want John McCain to be elected POTUS. They want to retain their hold on the House and the Senate and will do anything - literally anything, to hold on to that power. Lying about the economy brings it down, upsets people, and makes them look good. It makes George W. Bush look bad. If Bush looks bad, then they can blame him and throw mud on John McCain.

We need to be creative and think beyond the box when it comes to oil. My father's favorite saying is nothing is a greater cure for high prices than high prices. He thinks great things are going to come out of the oil prices and points to the work his nephew is doing. There are people throughout the country who are working as fast as they can to cash in on the high price of oil and invent a better mouse-trap. My favorite is a machine that makes gasoline out of garbage! Evidently the gadget costs about a million bucks. I have a feeling we will soon see the day when most communities who can afford it will be investing in these things and K2BW1S (kill two birds with one stone). You solve your garbage problem by turning it into gas. You sell the gas to pay for the whole process.