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The Biofuel Follies
The destruction of forests is one reason European governments are rethinking their biofuel enthusiasm. The European Union has awakened to the fact that growing crops (which requires diesel fuel for tractors, and nitrogen fertilizer made with natural gas) and turning them into biofuel (transporting them to energy-devouring manufacturing plants) takes a toll on the environment. So the EU might require—talk about lowered expectations—that any biofuel represent "a minimal level of greenhouse-gas savings."
The environmental argument for ethanol and other biofuels is, to say no more, rickety. The economic argument is refuted by the need to mandate and subsidize the fuels. The argument that biofuels are important for reducing our energy dependence on unreliable or dangerous Middle Eastern nations (the two largest sources of U.S. oil imports are turbulent Canada and militant Mexico) is mocked by the 54-cents-a-gallon tariff penalizing Brazilian ethanol. The theory behind that tariff is as old as American history. It is that "infant industries"—in this case, the ethanol industry that the government has ordered into existence—require protection. But protection permanently infantilizes industries.
If the argument for ethanol is that domestically produced energy should be increased, there are better ways of doing that. On the outer continental shelf there is a 50-year supply of clean-burning natural gas, 420 trillion cubic feet of it, that the government, at the behest of the planet's saviors, will not allow to be extracted. But, then, consider what was done in 1996 by the dominant half of today's Clinton tandem presidential candidacy.
Bill Clinton, by executive edict, declared 1.7 million acres of Utah to be a national monument. Under those acres are the largest known deposit—more than 60 billion tons—of low-sulfur, clean-burning coal. The second largest deposit, the value of which rose because of Clinton's action locking up an alternative supply, is in Indonesia and is owned by a member of the Indonesian Riady family, of fragrant memory, which was generous to Clinton's 1992 campaign.
James and Stephen Eaves, writing in Regulation quarterly, note that if the entire U.S. corn crop were turned into ethanol— it might have to be to meet the goal of 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017—it would displace 3.5 percent of gasoline use, just slightly more than would be displaced if drivers properly inflated their tires. And because the United States produces 40 percent of the world's corn supply and 70 percent of global corn exports, turning corn into fuel will damage the world's poor at a time when rising demand will require a tripling of world food production by 2050.
Energy policy has become a mare's nest of environmental and national-security fallacies. Energetic rethinking is in order.
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: catmeow @ 05/12/2008 9:13:27 PM
Comment: Utah Transit Authority needs to get Accessible Vans and Small Buses to go into neighborhoods to help Encourage People to take the Bus, to take Individuals to the Main Bus Route or Trax. Gas Prices have Sky Rocketed. UTA needs to work on Barrier Free, Benches and Shelters and also Increase the Frequency of Buses. Utah Transit Authority has good Bus Service Down Town Salt Lake City and in the Aveunes, UTA has Destroy the Bus System in the rest of Salt Lake County, so they can put more REVENUE into Light Rail and FrontRunner. John Inglish General Manager Salary is $266,614 Bonus $39,860 Other Incentives $60,526 Total $100,386, there are 9 more High Paid Exectives that receive a Huge Salaries and Huge Bonuses all at TAX PAYER EXPENSE. UTAH TRANSIT AUTHORITY has Less then Half as EFFICIENT TRANSIT SYSTEM. Google: UTA Transit Follies 5 or Utah Transit Follies 5 and also go to transitridersunion.blogstot.com for more Information. Please Help! Thank You!
Posted By: catmeow @ 05/12/2008 9:10:36 PM
Comment: Utah Transit Authority needs to get Accessible Vans and Small Buses to go into neighborhoods to help Encourage People to take the Bus, to take Individuals to the Main Bus Route or Trax. Gas Prices have Sky Rocketed. UTA needs to work on Barrier Free, Benches and Shelters and also Increase the Frequency of Buses. Utah Transit Authority has good Bus Service Down Town Salt Lake City and in the Aveunes, UTA has Destroy the Bus System in the rest of Salt Lake County, so they can put more REVENUE into Light Rail and FrontRunner. John Inglish General Manager Salary is $266,614 Bonus $39,860 Other Incentives $60,526 Total $100,386, there are 9 more High Paid Exectives that receive a Huge Salaries and Huge Bonuses all at TAX PAYER EXPENSE. UTAH TRANSIT AUTHORITY has Less then Half as EFFICIENT TRANSIT SYSTEM. Google: UTA Transit Follies 5 or Utah Transit Follies 5 and also go to transitridersunion.blogstot.com for more Information. Please Help! Thank You!
Posted By: pms888 @ 02/16/2008 5:29:21 PM
Comment: As a professor of environmental science I have to give George Will a ???D??? grade for his ???Biofuel Follies??? distortions. Although he does join the environmental community in making a strong case against the Bush Administrations surge towards Biofuels (the folly of land conversion from forest to biofuel cropland), he distorts the truth by suggesting that such folly is the environmental community???s proposal. His finger pointing in misdirected. He further distorts ecological facts by rhetorically demoting the biodiversity hotspot we call ANWR into a ???frozen???, ???desolate??? ???moonscape???. Will did not do his homework. His blind-faith acceptance of the corporate party line (hook and sinker) regarding the laughably miniscule environmental impact of fossil fuel exploration and extraction reveals his complete inability to critically evaluate the evidence and question his sources. Regrettably the most provocative component of this piece is the carte blanche provided him to write what he wants without regards to the facts.