Ethanol production in the corn belt. NPR.org photo.
Concerns over “global warming” now more obscurely referred to as “climate change,” allowed opportunistic King Corn / Big Ethanol to jump on the bandwagon, align with Big Green and cash in on the craziness. They were so successful that taxpayers have been bamboozled into picking up the immense tabs for related research, subsidized or facilitated production efforts and furthermore ensure the financial success of the participants with mandates, favored tax treatments and price supports. It was green meets crony capitalists chasing the green of lucre.
Green doctrine holds that small increases in CO-2 caused by human activity was warming the planet (as if even a small increase in temperature would be bad). It was a manipulated conclusion to start, and has not been born out by worldwide average temperature increases. However along the way the green movement further deluded themselves and the public to accept without serious question anything that purports to reduce carbon based (fossil) fuel consumption, especially evil petroleum and coal. Enter Big Ethanol as a White Knight.
The players essentially allied to produce policies that have resulted in 35% or more of corn production in the U.S. being devoted to ethanol production on the premise it reduces fossil fuel usage when combined with gasoline to produce gasohol for automobile usage. Representations are made that corn-based ethanol is energy-efficient to produce, which we will not get into here, although the matter is hotly debated. But a horrible effect has been to drive up the costs of food, adversely affecting most of human kind but especially the poor.
The devotion of so much productive land to corn to be used for ethanol for cars and facilitated by government policy, rather than to more efficient direct food production, is an immense wrong. If farmers want to sell their corn to make ethanol, fine, but NO subsidies or content mandates to provide an artificial market.
While we are always suspicious as to whether elements of the green movement care a twit about human life, rather than their worship of Gaea, there are elements who are raising concerns about the adverse effects of the emphasis on corn production on aquifers.
So much of the environmental movement has an abiding tendency to be overwrought about everything, that without additional verification of cause and effect we are not saying a reduction in aquifer levels is anything more than the result of periodic weather patterns. But if additional irrigation of corn is having that effect then it is important to raise the matter and all the better to help break the unholy alliance between Big Green and Big Ethanol and the boondoggle they have inflicted on tax payers.
Thanks to VM for referring this article from Hot Air. Water shortages leading right back to corn and ethanol. Jazz Shaw writing there refers to a recent study by the organization Ceres “a non-profit organization advocating for sustainability leadership.” (not a politically conservative think tank). Their report and explanatory graphics can be viewed here and here (for the charts). Shaw quotes from the Ceres report:
The ethanol industry, which uses 35 percent of all U.S. corn, adds further stress to regions experiencing declining water tables.
– 36 ethanol refineries are located in and source corn irrigated with water from the High Plains aquifer.
– Of these, 12 ethanol refineries above the High Plains aquifer are sourcing corn in areas experiencing cumulative declines in groundwater levels.
– Six of these refineries are in regions of extreme water-level decline (between 50-150 feet).
Shaw goes on to comment:
And yet, when you speak with most any of the army of so-called green activists, they will assure you that no price is too high if it replaces dirty, nasty old gasoline with the “Earth friendly” choice of ethanol. This willingness to accept the premise at all costs leads to support for government mandates, such as the odious Renewable Fuel Standard, currently crippling the market and, as it turns out, the environment as well . .
And yet supposedly green minded environmental activists will ignore the science, even when it comes from their own side, to push this agenda. They hypocrisy is enough to give one pause.
R Mall
