The Wall Street Journal takes the latest studies on biofuels, comes to the conclusion that we should blame environmentalists for the problem and, as always, keeps it classy:
Ethanol and biofuel proponents always point out that current options are little more than placeholders, temporary fixes until the technology advances and "second-generation" options emerge: "It's just around the corner," we're told. "No, really, this time it's real." That's why the Congressional energy bill put a cap on corn ethanol and, with lavish subsidies and tax credits, essentially legislated the creation of a speculative new biofuel industry from scratch. One hitch is that the technology never seems to turn that corner. Another is that, as the blockbuster Science studies imply, the unintended consequences of such divination matter more than the self-congratulation that "doing something" provides.
Yet special blame also belongs to the environmentalists, who are engaged in a grand bait-and-switch. They stir up a panic about global warming, and Washington responds to the political incentives. Then those policies don't work and the greens immediately begin pushing a new substitute, whose outcomes and costs are equally uncertain. But somehow, that never seems to discredit the entire enterprise and taxpayers keep footing the subsidy bill. Our guess is that these new revelations will also be ignored. They're too embarrassing.
This neglects the fact that it has been environmental groups who have raised questions about the efficacy of corn-based ethanol all along. See here, here, here, and here for just a few examples. Most have been saying, as a wonderful Los Angeles Times op-ed put it last year, "Alcohol is best taken in moderation, and that applies to cars as much as people." It's environmentalists who have argued that biofuels should be part of the mix in a new energy economy, not its entire basis, and we should be conscientious about factors such as land use and methods of moving toward a second generation of biofuels.
Who's really to blame for our bad policy on biofuels? Corporate agriculture giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Conagra, who have dropped millions on lobbyists over the years to make sure corn maintains a privileged position in American commodities, and the politicians beholden to them. Going back as far as 1978, as oil prices soared in response to a Middle East crisis, former ADM CEO Dwayne Andreas presented Jimmy Carter with his plan to get off oil, which was to offer a major tax break to ethanol producers. In the years since then, ADM has racked up well more than their fair share in corporate welfare in the form of subsidies and tax breaks as a result of their relationship to the government, up to and including the Bush years. Bush himself has lavished ADM and friends, from mandating that the U.S. gas supply contain 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2015 in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (knowing full well that the only biofuel we've invested enough in to make it viable is ethanol) to appointing a representative from the Corn Refiners Association, an ADM front-group, as his deputy secretary of agriculture.
Corn-based ethanol has won a prized spot in our energy policy because of corporations like ADM and the politicians who maintain a symbiotic relationship with them, in spite of all the warnings from the environmental community about the potential calamity of reliance upon it as a solution to global warming.
--Kate Sheppard
