It really is amazing to see how many prominent politicians and opinionmakers are abandoning the idea of forcing Americans to use ethanol fuels. The Wall Street Journal, a long-time opponent of distortionary ethanol subsidies and mandates, writes today about how this remarkable turnaround:
Even the environmental left, which pushed ethanol for decades as an alternative to gasoline, is coming clean. Lester Brown, one of the original eco-Apostles, wrote in the Washington Post that “it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed.” We knew for sure the tide had turned when Time magazine’s recent cover story, “The Clean Energy Myth,” described how turning crops into fuel increases both food prices and atmospheric CO2. No one captures elite green wisdom better than Time’s Manhattan editors. Can Vanity Fair be far behind?
All we can say is, welcome aboard. Corn ethanol can now join the scare over silicone breast implants and the pesticide Alar as among the greatest scams of the age. But before we move on to the next green miracle cure, it’s worth recounting how much damage this ethanol political machine is doing.
To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell’s David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can’t compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America’s corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption.
In December the Congressional Research Service warned that even devoting every last ear of American-grown corn to ethanol would not create enough “renewable fuel” to meet federal mandates. According to a 2007 OECD report, fossil-fuel production is up to 10,000 times as efficient as biofuel, measured by energy produced per unit of land.
Now scientists are showing that ethanol will exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions. A February report in the journal Science found that “corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years . . . Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%.” Princeton’s Timothy Searchinger and colleagues at Iowa State, of all places, found that markets for biofuel encourage farmers to level forests and convert wilderness into cropland. This is to replace the land diverted from food to fuel.
As the article goes on to detail, a growing number of politians, lead by Senator John McCain who has long been an outspoken opponent of ethanol subsidies, are asking the EPA to provide relief from government mandate. Let’s hope the momentum keeps going so that policymakers (who are responsible for these mandates in the first place) can repeal these distructive laws.