Honestly. His take didn’t surprise me, but, man! I did have to double-check what newspaper’s op-ed Caputo was retweeting.

“corn-based ethanol … diverts crops from bellies to fuel tanks & uses almost as much fossil fuel — from fertilizers made of natural gas to diesel tractors, industrial refineries and other sources — as the ethanol replaces”

And biofuels can also INCREASE greenhouse gas emissions https://t.co/Y7OOmj48IQ

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) June 6, 2023

WOWSAHS

Well, there’s a headline I wouldn’t expect to see

The Climate Solution That’s Horrible for the Climate

Do tell!

…It’s fairly well-known that farm-grown fuels like corn ethanol and soy biodiesel accelerate food inflation and global hunger, but they’re also a disaster for the climate and the environment. And that’s mainly because they’re inefficient land hogs. It takes about 100 acres worth of biofuels to generate as much energy as a single acre of solar panels; worldwide, a land mass larger than California was used to grow under 4 percent of transportation fuel in 2020.

Actually, in the Green world, it’s not “fairly well known,” as climate advocates have done everything they can to pummel the fossil fuel industry and bury any whiff of hypocrisy, environmental harms, deleterious effects on society, or misstatement of efficacy as far their biodiesel and alternate fuels claims go.

That is starting to change, as more wildlife specialists go public on the effects of the 2007 “Renewable Fuel Standards Act” on habitat and species preservation.

…[Tyler} Lark said renewable fuel standards, enacted in 2007, spurred millions of acres to be converted into cropland for the cultivation of corn and ethanol production. And that new farmland replaced wooded areas, prairies and wetlands relied upon by many endangered species, such as whooping cranes, black-footed ferrets and some pollinators like butterflies.

…Lark estimates the adoption of renewable fuel standards resulted in the expansion of cropland by as much as 7 million acres since 2008. Currently, more than 80 million acres of American land is dedicated to growing corn. Between 25 and 40 percent of that crop is made into ethanol every year, he said.

As well as studies jointly funded by as diverse groups like the National Wildlife Federation and the U.S. Department of Energy putting the lie to ethanol’s reign as the supposedly cleaner, earth-friendlier fuel additive.

Corn-based ethanol is mixed with United States gasoline supplies to lower transportation-related emissions, but a new study suggests ethanol may be worse for the environment than straight gasoline.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts previous research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) concluding ethanol and other biofuels offer greenhouse-gas benefits to fossil fuels, Reuters noted.

Funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy, the study found that ethanol is at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions from land use and changes to corn growth, as well as the emissions from production and combustion that come with any liquid carbon-based fuel.

Another recent study got the hard data on what everyone knew already – corn is an energy, fertilizer, and water hog.

…For instance, corn ethanol produced in central Nebraska depletes water at a much higher rate than corn ethanol produced in Iowa. Soy biodiesel that is produced in Appalachia has a much higher greenhouse gas intensity than soy biodiesel produced in Illinois.

Crunching all the numbers, here’s what the scientists found: America dedicates 5% of U.S. farmland in order to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by about 1%. At the same time, biofuels deplete water supplies at 36 times the rate (depletion per energy produced) of fossil fuels, and they poison water with nitrogen runoff at five times the rate.

As the authors put it: “Emissions reductions are achieved through biofuel production but include a considerable opportunity cost in terms of water and nitrogen intensity.”

Guess what? The new farmland to grow the extra food doesn’t replace parking lots. It replaces carbon-storing nature. That’s terrible for biodiversity and the climate. 10

— Michael Grunwald (@MikeGrunwald) June 6, 2023

It’s also a market hog. Even as far back as 2008, the push to biofuels was blamed for a catastrophic spike in global food prices in a leaked World Bank report.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

I love that they were worried about embarrassing W. Speaking of whom, the corn and soybean lobby are pretty powerful and his name pops up in the pantheon of “Presidents who were too chicken poop to buck the Ag guys.” Try going up against Midwest farmers who grow corn for ethanol and tell them your cutting their subsidies off, which is what this fellow in the NYT is proposing. That would take intestinal fortitude the likes of which none of these guys had.

…But President Biden, like Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump before him, pledged fealty to ethanol before competing in the Iowa caucus, because ethanol mandates jack up the price of corn and win voters. The presidential candidates John McCain, Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg all retracted their criticisms of biofuels before the Iowa caucus, too. An episode of “The West Wing” captured the dilemma well when a presidential candidate who wanted to break the tradition of wooing Iowa farmers with over-the-top ethanol promises quipped, “It’s practically in the Oxford English Dictionary under ‘pandering.’”

“Bambi would have a better shot of getting elected president of the N.R.A. than you’ll have of getting a single vote in this caucus,” his political aide replied.

That artificial premium paid, thanks to the subsidies to keep acreage for ethanol vice food production (in an era of increasing food insecurity world-wide), adds an average of 30% to the price of corn.

…Effects of biofuel expansion on agricultural commodity prices have received considerable attention by academics, government agencies, and other organizations. This literature is characterized by contradictory findings and a wide range of estimated impacts. Zhang et al. (2013) find projections ranging from five to 53% for increases in the price of corn by 2015 as a result of biofuel policy, while literature summarized by the National Research Council (2011) on the proportion of the 2007–2009 corn price spike attributable to biofuels includes estimates from 17% to 70%. Such divergent results make it difficult to assess the relative merits of policies that reduce, expand, or otherwise alter biofuel production trends.

Start cutting the frickin’ subsidies OFF.

Get ahold of Congress and tell them to grow a pair, because it doesn’t sound as if they’re getting the message.

…But the rules and volumes that Congress created for the Renewable Fuel Standard only extended through 2022, and Mr. Biden’s E.P.A. could easily revise them to advance his climate goals. The agency could limit the standard to biofuels made from leftover restaurant grease, crop residues or other waste products that don’t use farmland. It could create a stricter cap on crop-based biofuels, as Europe has done. Or it could at least tweak its own approach to take land use more seriously in its emissions analyses. Crossing the farm lobby is never easy, but it can be done: Senator Ted Cruz of Texas chose not to kowtow to ethanol producers in the 2016 presidential campaign, and he still won the Iowa Republican caucus.

For now, the E.P.A.’s proposed rule would actually expand soy biodiesel, which is even more land-intensive than corn ethanol. And even though corn ethanol is basically moonshine, an old libation with a century-long history as a fuel, a bipartisan group of House members has also introduced a bill to reclassify corn ethanol as an advanced biofuel so it could finally blow past the 15 billion gallon threshold.

What goes for the GREEN subsidies goes for the YELLOW subsidies, too, dudes.

As far as presidential candidates go, someone needs to speak up against the subsidies. I know one candidate already has, but I believe in doing your own research this early out. As Grunwald notes in his NYT piece, Ted Cruz was that guy in 2016, and he won Iowa, so it can be done.

But it needs to be done, needs to be said by more than one person, and not just presidential candidates – congressman have to get it together.

King Corn needs to go back to being foodstuff.