I'm interested in environmental issues, interested in class issues, and interested in South America, so this article caught my eye rather. It's also nice to see something a little off the current beaten path for progressive writing--Bush and the Bushniks, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Kyoto, you know.
When I first saw talk about ethanol and for that matter biodiesel I thought, what a cool idea! Fuel made from a renewable source, grown on farms! Presumably, all the CO2 you produced by burning them would be sucked back out of the air next year when you grew the new crop. Great! But the more I've seen, the less I like them.
The fossil fuels needed to grow the stuff seems to equal what you get out of them, they take up land that would be used for growing food, increasing pressure to use more and more land for crops, and they seem to be largely pushed by big agribusiness. They seem increasingly like a scam and a trap, and apparently not just in the US where they're pushed by the corn lobby.
Brazil's Ethanol Plan: Breeding Rural Poverty and Environmental Degradation
On Jan. 22 the Lula administration announced it will increase federal funding for Brazil's sugar-based ethanol industry by almost US$6 billion over the next four years. . . . Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugarcane, which has always been a primary agricultural commodity for the country. Because ethanol relies on sugarcane as its primary material, the industry is linked to the social and economic dynamics in rural areas that have developed from sugarcane production since the colonial era, most importantly labor exploitation and land concentration. . . . "The problems with [sugarcane's] production today are very similar to the problems it generated hundreds of years ago," says Maisa Mendonça, Director of the São Paulo-based NGO Rede Social. . . . Today Brazil has 72,000 sugar producers, and the ten largest producers still control less than 30% of production. However, the banker says, "The current trend is toward concentration, with a large number of mergers and acquisitions." Many of the larger companies that are buying out the smaller companies are multinational agribusiness corporations. . . . Sugarcane seems to be following the same pattern of foreign investment and concentration as that of soybeans. Today almost all soybean production in Brazil is controlled by a handful of multinational agribusinesses. Many of the corporations that control soybeans are now investing in the ethanol industry. . . . As more land is planted as a monoculture of sugarcane, and control of the industry becomes more concentrated, rural poverty increases. . . . But contrary to the "green" image evoked by industry advocates, the monoculture of sugarcane leads to massive environmental destruction. According to Melo, in Pernambuco only 2.5% of the original forest of the sugarcane region remains. In order to satisfy future global demand, Brazil will need to clear an additional 148 million acres of forest, says Eric Holt-Gimenez of the NGO FoodFirst, based in Oakland, CA.
It's hard to select out little pieces of this article--I'm still leaving out issues of food sovereignty, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Lula once again disappointing the left (as in, his party's base) by pushing ethanol exports at the expense of peasants, and much more. As usual, so many issues are interconnected. And yet, the complexity is partly illusion--what it seems to boil down to is that as usual, a push from above to shape development for elite profits screws up everything else, from the people to the land.
Same problem here in Canada :
Canadian Renewable Fuels Association
"Climate Change Solution Made In Canada"
(That sounds oddly familiar.)
Members : Agricore, Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Cargill, General Motors, Monsanto, Pioneer Dupont, Suncor Energy Products, Shell Canada, and Sylvite (fertilizer).
Chief Executive : Kory Teneycke - lobbyist, senior environmental policy advisor to Premier Mike Harris at the same time, and previously a political aide to Preston Manning.
Which needs to made in starker terms - we will be producing food for cars, not people. Of course the market economy responds to money, not need.
Since biofuels have to be grown on arable land it will create global humanitarian disaster, as Monbiot said in "Heat." Also they require lots of irrigation and cutting down of trees (which help to retain moisure in the land and cool the earth)thus accelerating rather than ameliorate climate change. Remember cutting down rainforests releases lots of carbon dioxide , so you could say that this growing industry has "accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel."
The whole ethanol industry is one big racket. The massive sugar cane production required to fuel Brazil's ethanol needs is destroying enormous acreages of rainforest. And now that they'll be exporting to the US, expect the destruction to increase. And let's remember that vehicles running on ethanol85 are far less fuel efficient than when they run on gasoline.
If you want to know what happens when countries enthusiastically endorse "biofuels", see the Dutch palm oil experience. Clusterfuck from start to finish. Lots of former rainforests in Southeast Asia are now marginally productive palm oil plantations feeding the Netherlands' appetite for biofuels.
Further to Alison's post:
"...Harper confidantes such as John Reynolds and Ken Boessenkool, both of whom regularly meet with the prime minister to discuss party strategy, are also registered lobbyists...
...Boessenkool, one of Harper's closest advisers, is registered to lobby for energy giants TransAlta and Enbridge, as well as the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association - all of which have a vital interest in Conservative tax and environmental policies..."
article by Bruce Cheadle
Jan and raging are right.
I see this as another form of corporate welfare for the above listed companies. You can bet if they et their way, locally self-produced fuels will be outlawed and only those fuels produced by ADM et all will be allowed on the market.
Gawd I can't believe they are trying to paint this as environmentally friendly.
There won't be much in the way of locally self-produced fuels. They won't be outlawed, because they will be inconsequential. If the government mandates that all gasoline must contain 10% ethanol, (as is already the case in Manitoba) the subsidy comes in the form of lower gas tax revenue. Adding a 10% ethanol component to gasoline raises costs by about three cents a litre. The government lowers its gasoline tax take by that amount, so ethanol is the same price for the consumer. That's where the subsidy kicks in -- government taxes ethanol-gasoline at a lower rate. Other subsidies would likely take the place of financing the building of ethanol plants. The farmers will love it, as it will greatly increase the demand, and thus the price, of grain. Already world grain markets are in a major bull run because of ethanol production. The Manitoba ethanol law is really just a subsidy to farmers. Like agriculture needs more subsidies.
However, all this concerns only gasoline with a 5% or 10% ethanol content. We're still dealing primarily with a gasonline additive. The big scam comes in the form of ethanol-85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline). For about $800 in additional manufacturing costs, car companies can produce engines that run on both gasoline and ethanol-85. (The engine's ignition timing needs to adjust slightly to account for the differing flash points of gasoline and ethanol.) Many of these are already being sold in the US. However, when they run on ethanol, they only achieve about 65% to 70% of the fuel economy that they do on gasoline.
As for the costs of ethanol-85, I don't even want to think about it. If gasoline with 10% ethanol costs an additional 3 cents per litre to produce, how much does ethanol-85 cost? Will the government have to reduce its fuel tax take to zero in order to make it affordable to the consumer? Now you're talking subsidies! And how do provincial governments repair roads if they don't take in fuel taxes?
Fortunately, we may be spared from this silliness. A colleague of mine is from Brazil, where ethanol-85 is mandated -- all vehicles sold there must run on it. However, she says that on a cool morning (or what passes for a cool morning in Brazil) the engines won't start. And it's a major problem there. Now, does such a fuel sound like a good fit with Canada's climate? Or even the US? I wonder how many people who talk about the need to diversify from fossil fuels and adapt more bio-fuels even realize this.
Everyone likes to hate big oil -- pardon me -- Big Oil, so biofuels instantly capture the imagination. Fossil fuels aren't the problem so much as energy efficiency is. There are still way to many pickups and SUVs being purchased. Pollution can be cut WAY down if consumers can change their buying habits. This can only be done with tax disincentives, something no government is willing to do. Maybe the "greedy" oil companies are our best ally in this. If the price of fuel goes to, say, $1.50 a litre, consumers will start making the switch to smaller vehicles on their own.
This might be somewhat of a drive-by post but I just want to stress that while most ethanol is a terrible idea since it uses the very parts of plants we would eat (thus competing with food production, & and being very inefficient), certain types of biodiesel seem to have real potential. Biodiesel can be made from grasses, recycled wood and/or high-yield plants which have no edible use. I would suggest checking http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/ for some in-depth ideas.
Also as raging ranter rages, energy conservation is essential, right now it is impossible to replace all the fossil fuel we use with plant products. Besides raising gas prices we should consider more sustainable urban growth (less sprawl and commuting), better building practice, and smaller houses. All of them rather taboo.
If the price of fuel goes to, say, $1.50 a litre, consumers will start making the switch to smaller vehicles on their own.
On the other hand, a lot of the poor in the world will suffer.
There is one source of biodiesel that interests me, actually. A couple of times now I've seen in Discover magazine these people, I believe they've got a full sized plant running now, with a technology that will turn organic garbage, including everything from turkey offal to many plastics, into diesel. They figure they should be able to make fuel and substantially reduce the flow of waste into landfills at the same time. And if anything, that may be better than neutral in terms of climate change because in landfills, much of the stuff would decompose over time, but it would make not just CO2 but also mucho methane.
While Raging Ranter has a couple of points, I'm wary of others. F'rinstance, "Like agriculture needs more subsidies." Well, yeah, it probably does--more and especially better subsidies. Fact is that as things are standing family farms can't keep going. Our subsidy levels are way lower than US or EU levels. Doesn't help that Libs and Cons talk about help for farms and then lay on subsidies that do actual farmers little good.
As to Big Oil, yeah, I hate 'em. And the more I learn about 'em, the more I hate 'em. And they're not "greedy" in quotation marks, they're GREEDY in real life, no bullshittin', in letters ten feet tall. Powermongering too. They're nobody's ally, let's not fool ourselves. And energy efficiency is a dashed good idea, but fossil fuels damn well are a problem, and the more we use alternative power sources like solar, wind, tide, geothermal and so forth the better. High prices are only so useful for that; they'll encourage a certain degree of energy efficiency, but even there . . . I'd like to save money with a more energy efficient home, but ironically I can't afford it. Don't generally have enough money set aside to start doing what's needed, and if costs go up I'll just have less. Government programs, public action, are important. And that, as PeterK suggests, includes things like intelligent urban planning, better building codes and so on.
All fine ideas in principle Purple Library Guy. But I would suspect the costs of such programs enabling us to do everything from retrofitting our homes to using alternative sources of energy to increasing agricultural subsidies so that family farms stopped going under would be prohibitively expensive. We must always remember to separate the intent of programs from their eventual results. (See the Dutch palm oil experience for that.)
I'm highly skeptical of using large government programs to bring about changes in behaviour, or to create a major economic and industrial restructuring. More money for public transit certainly. Better urban planning definitely, although somewhat overrated. But besides those things, I think tax disincentives designed to push people and industry away from polluting and to pay for certain externalities is the best option. I'm not at all confident in government's ability to solve the many energy challenges we face through massive program spending.
And I should add that I'm not terribly knowledgeable on biofuels. My previous comments dealt specifically with what I've read regarding the Dutch experience with Palm Oil, and with the ethanol experience here and in Brazil. I was not dismissing all biofuels out of hand. As others have commented, there may well be some excellent biofuel alternatives out there.
You can be skeptical of using large government programs to bring about changes in behaviour all you want, but in the real world large government programs have been among the most common causes of changes in behaviour. Even when the behaviour desired was market-oriented and the people running the programs were capitalist as all get out.
For instance, in industrial revolution England, how did they get lots and lots of people who had previously been semi-independent peasant crofters to become wage-labourers in factories, making less money for more work with less independence? Through concerted government action to take away their land (enclosures and other confiscations) and forbid hunting and gathering to supplement income, with draconian enforcement. They used large government programs to take away the independent livelihoods of the poor, thus forcing them into wage labour. And it worked.
Even when it comes to energy efficiency, look at the seventies. Yes, some of the change in energy efficiency after the oil shock was a result of people buying smaller cars. But a good deal was a result of government programs to increase home energy efficiency, and government regulations about car fuel efficiency; those had a significant effect even though governments never got *really* serious about them at the time. Then it stopped seeming to be an issue and lobbies went to work, and governments let all that stuff slide, and efficiency stopped improving.
When it comes to the specifics of home retrofitting, the NDP has a policy proposal that's costed, involving financing low-interest loans to homeowners that would cost the same or less to pay off as the money saved in energy bills, but having inspectors come to your home, assess what's needed, and set up the work and the loan so all you have to do is sign on the dotted line. The cost wasn't that high. And of course it would generate plenty of economic activity as well. I'm often critical of the NDP, but that was a proposal that struck me as well thought out and constructive.
It seems to me that people forget or are not informed about the downside of biofuels. To produce these imense fields the farmers have to apply large amounts of pestesides to control insects and large amounts of fertilizers for growth. As these products produce vast quantities of runoff that enters rivers and streams and oceans depleting oxegen and producing nitrogen that grows algea. The tradeoff has to be measured in the amount of harm produced by these chemicles to the amount of good by using biofuels.