This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

April 20, 2008

Biofuels

Worse than coal

Opponents of coal, gas and petroleum sometimes urge a switch to "biofuels" as a cure for problems caused by fossil fuels. However, such a switch might be a blunder.

"The Clean Energy Scam," Time's April 7 cover story, outlines disastrous impacts of growing more corn, soybean and oilseed crops to make biofuels.

"Politicians and big business are pushing biofuels like corn-based ethanol as alternatives to oil," reporter Michael Grunwald writes. "All they're really doing is driving up food prices and making global warming worse - and you're paying for it."

Making and burning biofuels, it turns out, creates more carbon pollution than burning gasoline.

A new study published in Science magazine shows that corn ethanol and soy biodiesel actually generate twice the pollutants of gasoline, when the full environmental impacts of biofuels are taken into account.

Clearing new farm areas to grow corn and grains devastates environmental treasures like Amazon Basin rainforests, which will disappear forever. And it destroys carbon-absorbing trees.

Taking corn and other seed crops off dinner plates around the world increases food prices for everyone and threatens to increase world hunger.

"The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year," Grunwald writes.

America has quintupled ethanol production over the last 10 years. Government leaders just mandated another fivefold increase over the next decade.

"The biofuels boom," Time warns, "is one that could haunt the planet for generations - and it's only getting started."

Everyone should heed such warnings and ask their representatives to rethink the biofuel mania. Of course, political opposition will come from the powerful farm lobby and from areas like Iowa, now "America's biofuel mecca."

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman echoes the warning, noting that "subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states."

Krugman blasts political leaders. "In case you're wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue."

Biofuels increase profits for some business owners. But the rest of Americans pay for it. Biofuels manufacturers now pocket more than $8 billion a year in government subsidies.

The global energy crisis is horrendously complex. Plunging into a simplistic biofuels cure is folly.