With our polar ice caps shrinking, our coral reefs dying and our ecological clocks ticking, Earthlings are losing patience with the shameless gas-guzzling status quo in the United States. Even the barons of the old energy industries have abandoned their speaking points that denied climate change, and have begun demanding government action.
“The U.S. needs a strong, consistent and mandatory national framework to manage carbon emissions,” said James Mulva, CEO of ConocoPhillips, at a conference sponsored by the Cambridge Energy Research Associates earlier this month in Houston.
Now, when an oil company exec demands federal regulation of the energy industry, you know things are getting desperate. So, with the end of the Bush era only 331 days away (but who’s counting?), federal action to address climate change is surely on the horizon.
But what can we do to reduce carbon-based emissions? More specifically, what can our government — and those who wish to take over the White House — do?
It’s hardly news that corn ethanol is a boondoggle. Research by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has found that it produces 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline when you calculate the nitrous oxide emitted from the artificial fertilizer poured on the fields to grow the stuff. Still, federal and state subsidies for the industry exceeded $5 billion — or about $1 a gallon — in 2006, greenhouse gas emissions and all.
Most of the promise of biofuel rests in the development of ethanol from waste biomass — the leaves and stalks of the corn plants, switchgrass or other plant cellulose. The refining process is still too expensive to be commercially viable, but progress continues in laboratories such as those of the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, and most strategies for moving to a post-carbon energy economy include a healthy dose of emphasis on biofuels.
Or at least they did.
Two studies published in Science, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this month reveal how complex the equation is when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally.
The trouble is humans have these annoying habits . . . like eating. So when American farmers convert one quarter of the corn crop to fuel — as they have in the years since Congress boosted the price of ethanol with runaway subsidies — that reduces global food production. Since people still need to eat, they grow food crops someplace else, clearing prairies, forests or other land previously left fallow to plant crops.
So now instead of absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, the disrupted land releases it.
In the study conducted by researchers from Princeton and other institutions that calculates the impact of converting land to agricultural crops, corn ethanol was found to nearly double greenhouse-gas emissions over 30 years and to increase those emissions for 167 years. Ethanol from switchgrass, while ecologically superior to that produced from corn, still increases greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent if plants are grown on old U.S. corn fields.
As the Princeton scientists said, “Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming.”
Apparently, the only way to guarantee that biofuels work in the renewable-energy equation is to generate them from agricultural waste.
“Biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and offer immediate and sustained greenhouse gas advantages,” said the study in Science, which was conducted by the University of Minnesota and other institutions.
What all this suggests is that the corn-ethanol craze represents the absolute wrong way to develop climate action policy. It’s pure political expedience — reckless, counterproductive and a giant ripoff of American taxpayers and consumers.
Climate change is coming, that’s for sure, but whether the methods we come up with to mitigate its effects will be intelligent, scientifically based and effective — and not just one more political shell game — is another question altogether.
All three leading presidential candidates have promised to take action on climate change. Sens. John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama frequently mention climate change in their stump speeches and have set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, all three eagerly peddled snake oil in exchange for votes in the Iowa caucuses.
Knowing full well it does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy independence or lower the price of gasoline, all three embraced increased production of corn ethanol.
McCain, possibly signaling how ridiculous it was, joked to Iowans that he enjoys a drink of corn ethanol each morning.
This was in stark contrast to a statement he made in 2003. “Ethanol is a product that would not exist if Congress didn’t create an artificial market for it. No one would be willing to buy it. Yet thanks to agricultural subsidies and ethanol producer subsidies, it is now a very big business — tens of billions of dollars that have enriched a handful of corporate interests — primarily one big corporation, ADM,” McCain said. “Ethanol does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase our energy independence, nothing to improve air quality.”
Clinton behaved no better. “Iowa is way ahead of the rest of the country,” she gushed at a campaign rally last summer. “What you’ve done with ethanol . . . you’re setting the pace.”
But in 2002, during a debate on corn ethanol subsidies in the Senate, she was less enthusiastic. “We are providing a single industry with a guaranteed market for its products — subsidies on top of subsidies on top of subsidies and, on top of that, protection for liability. What a sweetheart deal,” she said.
Obama, who is from the great corn-ethanol-producing state of Illinois, was only marginally better. At least he’s remained consistent. He’s all for the subsidies and always has been.
Nothing about the transition to a post-carbon economy will be as simple as substituting corn ethanol for gasoline, and voters are smart enough to understand that. Improved efficiency, development of solar and wind technologies, and cautious use of biofuels all will play a part.
We’ll get there, but only if the presidential candidates — whether they are pitching change, experience or a ride on the straight-talk express — quit playing political games and get to work.
Diane Carman is director of communications for the School of Public Affairs and the Presidential Climate Action Project at the University of Colorado Denver. She is a former columnist for The Denver Post.
