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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (7671)	5/18/2008 3:36:26 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24223

The great green mirage still beyond the horizon Biofuels I A gleam in the eye of George W. Bush, ethanol turns out to be the villain behind soaring prices for food and gasoline Craig McInnes, Vancouver Sun Published: Saturday, May 17, 2008 With soaring food prices around the world that threaten the already fragile capacity of hundreds of millions of people to get enough to eat, that is a pretty compelling slogan. It's also a vivid illustration of how rapidly and how far ethanol distilled from corn, and by association other biofuels, have fallen from grace. Ethanol, also known as ethyl alcohol, was the freedom fuel, especially in the United States, which along with Brazil is one of the world's top producers, but also in Canada. In the U.S it carried the hope of freedom from foreign oil and freedom to carry on driving as before despite growing concerns about climate change. In Canada, the allure is primarily as a green alternative to ordinary gasoline. But over the past 18 months or so, ethanol has been fingered as the villain behind both rising gasoline prices in the U.S. and Canada and the soaring price of food around the world. Last year at this time, some analysts were blaming the government's push for biofuels for the shortage of gasoline that was driving up prices. They argued that oil companies were scaling back plans to increase or update refinery capacity because of U.S. President George W. Bush's insistence that ethanol will displace a significant portion of gasoline in American vehicles. The high prices for regular gasoline that have persisted since have further paved the way for the home-grown fuel by making ethanol operations more profitable. Farmers responded to the anticipation of new demand and to federal subsidies by planting record acreage with corn, often at the expense of other crops. The price of corn doubled. Along the way, scientists started producing studies questioning the environmental benefit of ethanol, especially ethanol produced from corn. That hasn't mattered much in Washington, where Bush's motivation has been primarily in a secure domestic fuel supply, but it should have more impact in Canada where biofuels have been pushed as a part of the good fight against climate change. Despite the recent concerns, the governments in Washington, Ottawa and Victoria are pressing ahead with plans to make biofuels a significant part of our energy futures. Which prompts the question: Are they mad? The answer depends on what the future holds. If the biofuel industry follows largely along its current path, it will contribute little to international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and a lot to rising food prices. Currently, ethanol is produced in Canada primarily from wheat and corn. In the U.S., it is almost entirely corn. They are used because they are relatively easy to turn into ethanol through variations on processes used for thousands of years. Both these crops have the disadvantage -- or advantage, from the farmers' point of view -- of putting upward pressure on food prices. They also require enough energy to produce and distribute that by the time they are powering vehicles down the road, the net gain in terms of avoiding greenhouse gas emissions are slim to none. A recent study published in the journal Science found that clearing land for crops to be used in ethanol production resulted in a net increase in the greenhouse gas emissions compared to the continued used of conventional fuels. 1 2 next page canada.com