GoodFuels

Deforestation debunked

Worried about Brazilian deforestation? Don’t blame ethanol.

Environmental activists and other anti-ethanol interests attempt to vilify biofuels in part out of their concerns about Amazon deforestation. But is ethanol the real culprit? A recent article from DTN reporter Kieran Gartlan exposes the real factors behind deforestation in Brazil.

Gartlan writes that U.S. corn exports have remained steady, U.S. soybean exports have increased and Brazilian acreage in both crops has remained steady or even decreased. At the same time, “Amazon deforestation has fallen for the past five years, from 10,588 square miles in 2004 to 4,620 square miles last year, according to figures from Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE).”

Gartlan also reports that “a study carried out by the Soybean Work Group (GTS) earlier this year showed that of 630 samples of deforested areas since July 2006 only 12 had gone to soybeans and 200 to cattle. The remaining 418, or 70 percent, were unused indicating that the main reason for cutting down trees was for timber and land grabbing.”

Clearly, the expansion of the biofuels industry worldwide, let alone in the U.S., has nothing to do with the motives of those clearing Amazon rainforest. Consider this another myth about ethanol busted.

The entire story, courtesy of DTN, can be read here.

Climate Change Bill Critics

They say that politics makes strange bedfellows and that is definitely the case with the “American Clean Energy and Security Act” passed last week by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Both agricultural and environmental groups, Democrats and Republicans, have all lined up to criticize the legislation that claims it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent over the next 40 years.

A coalition of environmental groups that includes Greenpeace USA and Friends of the Earth, issued a statement that reads, in part, “the decision-making process was co-opted by oil and coal lobbyists determined to sustain our addiction to dirty fossil fuels, even as the country stands ready to rebuild our economy and clean up the environment with real clean energy. The resulting bill reflects the triumph of politics over science, and the triumph of industry influence over the public interest.”

Agricultural groups voicing opposition include the American Farm Bureau, National Corn Growers, National Chicken Council, National Turkey Federation, United Egg Producers and the Fertilizer Institute.

House Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) has voiced his strong opposition to the bill and indicated last week that he has enough votes, both Democrat and Republican, to defeat the legislation. Republican lawmakers are also opposed to the bill. Congressman Joe Barton of Texas, top Republican on the House committee, threatened to have the 1000-plus page bill read in full to slow action on the legislation. He backed down on that threat, but committee chairman Henry Waxman - the bill’s co-author - hired a speed reader just in case. (Funny video of that on YouTube is worth watching.)

So, the question is, does anyone besides the bill’s authors actually like this piece of legislation?

Bob Dinneen in Huffington Post

Renewable Fuels Association’s CEO Bob Dinneen in his latest Huffington Post blog:

“As with his cover story last year, with the even-handed headline “The Clean Energy Scam” Grunwald’s (TIME author Michael Grunwald) recent article relies on a theory propounded by a source whom he describes as “Princeton scholar Tim Searchinger.” As Grunwald writes, the thesis that producing ethanol has “indirect effects on land use: when an acre of land is used to grow fuel instead of food, an extra acre somewhere else is probably going to be converted into farmland to grow food.” Moreover, he continues, “that acre may well be an acre of wetland or forest that would otherwise store loads of carbon.”

While he is indeed housed at Princeton University, Searchinger is an attorney by training, not a scientist, an economist, or an agronomist. So his assessment of the likelihood that the increased production of biofuels in the United States will require the despoiling of forests and wetlands which will deposit carbon in the atmosphere and promote global warming is as worthy of respectful attention as the views of any other attorney with a interest in economics, agriculture, and the environment.

Indeed, the EPA examination — and Grunwald’s journalism and Searchinger’s thesis even more so — ignore the actual alternative to biofuels: petroleum products. By exploring the “indirect land-use change” that may be caused by producing biofuels but not the comparable consequences of any other industry, including producing and using petroleum products, these stories and studies offer little illumination for the debates that must be held and the decisions that must be made.”

Dinneen goes in even more detail about the mistruths Grunwald talks about in his article. Definitely worth a read.