Biofuels seem like a great idea. Our country produces a ton of cheap corn every year. Our country also consumes a lot of fuel, particularly fossil fuels, which happen to pollute the environment and tether us to other foreign countries. So why not turn all that corn we've been growing into fuel? I, for one, was sold.
But in a surprising twist of events, a recent report notes that the price of corn has raised rather substantially in the past 18 months, from $2/bushel to a staggering $5/bushel. Ethanol production from corn is largely to blame; suddenly, there's not enough industrial corn to sate the rising demand, and complaints about rising food prices, particularly from those countries we export foods to (i.e. Mexico), are steadily increasing.
Meanwhile, another report from the AP suggests that ethanol produced from corn and other cellulosic biofuels could actually create two times as many greenhouse gas emissions as standard gasoline, particularly because of the required land use changes caused by this shift.
Readers of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma might note the interesting quandry. On one hand, because of 1970s-era legislation, our country produces an exorbitant amount of corn, and constantly searches for creative ways to put it into use (e.g., resynthesizing it back into the food system as cattle feed, corn oils and syrups, etc.) On the other hand, as issues beyond mere food production come into play, such as energy independence and clean/green fuels, we're potentially left with our forests and grasslands replaced by cornfields, and the associated long-term damage to our ecological systems.
Obama's current energy platform highlights three alternate sources: biofuels, "clean coal", and renewable energy (geothermal, solar, and wind). Being a realist, he notes that the latter won't hit the 25% mark for another 17 years. So we're left with biofuels and low-emissions coal. And with biofuels, he's looking at introducing 60 billion gallons of biofuels into the fuel system by 2030. This could have given him a really big boost in the ever-crucial, corn-rich Iowa - note his speech at an Iowa ethanol plant last August - but can he translate it into a sustainable policy?
I suppose, in light of these findings, I'm challenging Obama and the other Democrats to consider other energy forms as part of their platforms. Nuclear power, for example, hasn't directly been in the national discourse since the Carter administration - since then, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and carelessly placed vats of glowing goo in The Simpsons have made it much the power pariah. Investments in next-generation nuclear power technology, particularly as it relates to disposal and reprocessing, could've made energy independence a tenable reality today, had it continued on its path 30 years ago. Meanwhile, our friend France is 78% nuclear powered, and by no small coincidence has very low carbon emissions relative to other highly industrialized countries.
It remains to be seen whether biofuels will be able to essentially make lemonade out of lemons, or drag us deeper into our Faustian relationship with our own land. I certainly hope that Obama's looking carefully at all the options on the table.
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