CORYDON, Iowa — The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America’s push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.
Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. When President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country “stronger, cleaner and more secure.”
But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.
As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, which soared in price, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and contaminated water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.
Five million acres of land set aside for conservation — more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined — have been converted on Obama’s watch.
Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.
Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, polluted rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can’t survive.
The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative consequences.
All energy comes at a cost. In some cases, such as the decision to allow wind farms that sometimes kill eagles, the administration accepts environmental costs because they pale in comparison to the havoc global warming ultimately could cause.
In the case of ethanol, the administration believes it must encourage the development of next-generation biofuels.
“That is what you give up if you don’t recognize that renewable fuels have some place here,” EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said. “All renewable fuels are not corn ethanol.”
But next-generation biofuels haven’t been living up to expectations. And the government’s predictions on ethanol have proven so inaccurate that independent scientists question whether it will ever achieve its central environmental goal: reducing greenhouse gases.
“They’re raping the land,” said Bill Alley, a Democratic member of the board of supervisors in Wayne County, Iowa, which now bears little resemblance to the rolling cow pastures shown in postcards sold at a Corydon town pharmacy.
The numbers behind the ethanol mandate have become so unworkable that, for the first time, the EPA is soon expected to reduce the amount of ethanol required to be added to the gasoline supply. An unusual coalition of big oil companies, environmental groups and food companies is pushing the government to go even further and reconsider the entire ethanol program.
Seven things to know about ethanol
1. Ethanol is an alcohol that is fermented and distilled from corn. Since 2007, when Congress required oil companies to blend billions of gallons of ethanol into their gasoline, it has become one of America’s most widely produced renewable fuels.
2. When it burns, ethanol emits less carbon dioxide than gasoline. That’s why it is a centerpiece of the government’s plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
3. But getting ethanol from corn has a hidden environmental price that the government rarely acknowledges. America’s ethanol policy has encouraged farmers to plant millions of new acres of corn.
4. More than 5 million conservation acres — environmentally sensitive farmland that had been set aside and allowed to grow as grassland — have disappeared on President Barack Obama’s watch.
5. Every time a farmer plows into grassland, it releases carbon dioxide that had been naturally locked in the soil. In the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the policy encourages a practice that emits greenhouse gas.
6. The corn boom has increased fertilizer pollution in Midwest waterways and beyond. Scientists say that’s worsened a huge “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.
7.Environmentalists and many scientists now say, when all the environmental factors are considered, corn ethanol is not a viable strategy for combating global warming. But it has been a boon to Midwest farmers. The Obama administration no longer pitches ethanol as a greenhouse gas strategy. Rather, it’s frequently presented as a program that helps rural America.
The Associated Press
