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With so much misinformation surrounding the environmental consequences of biofuels production, it’s oftentimes difficult to separate fact from fiction.
Those pithy, persuasive advertising slogans are difficult to ignore. One of my favorites: Live Green, Go Yellow, Fill Up, Feel Good.
Despite all the glowing, flowery rhetoric from the corn ethanol industry, not all biofuels are created equally. In fact, corn ethanol’s environmental impacts are vast and many—and don’t believe otherwise. Simply put, the facts are stacking up against the production of corn-based ethanol (and some other biofuels), while political leaders and farm groups continue to tout ethanol as a viable, environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels.
The most recent example: A new study by The Nature Conservancy and the University of Minnesota finds that converting land for biofuel crops (see corn ethanol) results in major carbon emissions, which actually worsens the problem of global warming instead of reducing it.
Touted as a first-of-its-kind study, it was published recently in the online version of Science. According to the study, demand for ethanol in America and worldwide is causing producers to convert forests and grasslands into crop fields. The result: losing that vegetation releases far more carbon than is actually saved by replacing fossil fuels by ethanol and other biofuels.
Joe Fargione is biologist who conducted the study for the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy. Let’s just say he did the heavy lifting—big time. He poured over reports on land-use changes around the world, and calculated a “carbon debt” from the land being cleared for biofuels production.
“We analyzed all the benefits of using biofuels as alternatives to oil, but we found that the benefits fall far short of the carbon losses,” he said. “If you’re trying to mitigate global warming, it simply does not make sense to convert land for biofuels production.”
The study calculates that it will take 93 years for the carbon losses from plowing one acres of healthy grassland to equal the savings from corn ethanol produced on that land.
In effect, Fargione’s research asks a simple question: Is it worth it. And the answer, according to natural resources officials across the country, is becoming increasingly clear: No.
Is it worth the loss in wildlife habitat, such as thousands of acres Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands? Is it worth the mounting pollution of our cherished fisheries? Is it worth threatening our aquifers by using up billions upon billions of gallons of water to produce it? Is it worth the increase in global food prices? Is it worth the billions in public subsidies?
Meanwhile, the ethanol industry is crying foul, saying the study is too simplistic and doesn’t factor in the economic benefits derived from growing corn-based ethanol and other biofuels in the U.S. and abroad or the environmental costs of burning fossil fuels.
Please. We’re neither talking about economic impacts nor the environmental toll wrought from our continued dependence on petroleum. No, we’re talking about the fallout of how biofuels are harming the environment—both here in the U.S and across the globe—and whether corn ethanol (to name one biofuel) is the answer to our long-term energy needs.
I don’t want to beat up on farmers. They’re good people. Corn prices are up, and they’re cashing in. But corn ethanol must be phased out—and fast. Simply put, we need to transition into the next generation of biofuels. Let’s mandate cellulosic ethanol—not the corn-based variety.
Fargione did note that some biofuels do not contribute to global warming (and habitat destruction) because they do not require the conversion of native habitat, which in, the long run, is good news for farmers.
These include waste from agriculture and forest lands and native grasses and woody biomass grown on marginal lands unsuitable for crop production. The study urges that all fuels be fully evaluated for their impacts on global warming, as well as impacts on habitat conversion. I couldn’t agree more.
“We will need to implement many approaches simultaneously to solve climate change—there is no silver bullet. But there are many silver BBs,” said Fargione. “Some biofuels may be one silver BB, but only if produced without requiring additional land to be converted from native habitats to agriculture.
“All the biofuels we use now cause habitat destruction, either directly or indirectly,” Fargione added. “Global agriculture is already producing food for 6 billion people. Producing food-based biofuel, too, will require that still more land be converted to agriculture.”
And that doesn’t bode well for anyone—hunters, anglers or the average taxpayer. As one official said recently” Corn ethanol is bad science, bad environmental policy and bad economic policy.”
Misinformation? The evidence—it mounting by the day—suggests otherwise.
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