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May 7, 2008 at 08:45:58
Is Feeding the Hungry More Important than Staying Obese and Diseased? by Marcus B Page 1 of 2 page(s) |
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Senate Republicans, including John McCain, are asking the EPA to suspend plans to increase corn ethanol production for biofuels because of rising food prices [1]. Setting aside this apparent and sudden desire to regulate a free market and display concern for the poor coming from the Republicans, let’s just look at how the U.S. corn crop is currently used. Only 11.7% [2] of the U.S. crop is consumed in the U.S. as “food” – mostly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners (6.5%) used in soft drinks and linked to obesity and other diseases and also in the form of beverage alcohol (1.2%) used in hard drinks and linked, obviously, to alcoholism. Ethanol production accounts for 18.5% of the U.S. crop. Exports (helping to fee the rest of the world) account for 19.3%.
So far, that totals to less than half of corn production. Where does the other 50.3% go?
We feed the rest to animals. Unfortunately, beef cattle are not well-adapted for digesting corn—it tends to cause them health problems [3], necessitating the use of antibiotics which, in turn, find their way into our food supply, making new diseases more antibiotic-resistant. While fatter beef may taste better to some, it has been linked to heart disease and stroke.
It should be a no-brainer: Should Americans give up obesity, heart disease, strokes and other chronic inflammatory diseases in order to feed the world’s poor? It should especially be a no-brainer if, at the same time, we can give up one of our largest sources of greenhouse gasses (methane from feedlots) and water table pollution (waste from feedlots).
But, it turns out, we don’t even have to give up our precious juicy burgers and cokes/pepsis to feed the world’s poor because the same corn can be used for both ethanol production and cattle feed. Ethanol production produces “distiller’s grain” as a by-product which can be re-used as animal feed and apparently is healthier for the animals.
So, we could easily feed the world’s poor and still maintain the high standard of illness and health care expense we’ve become accustomed to. And, if worse came to worse, we might even choose to produce a healthier food supply for ourselves to save a little more of the grain for export, help reduce America’s trade deficit and lower health care costs.
Why then, are the Republicans opposing expansion of ethanol production and attempting to frame the debate as alternative energy vs. world hunger? As with all frames, this frame is significant because of what it excludes from view— mainly all the industries that profit from the hugely dysfunctional status quo. I’ll leave the naming of those industries as an exercise for the reader.
Another important factor to be aware of in the debate over ethanol production is that current research is very close to having a scalable process for producing ethanol from switchgrass [4], corn stalks, wood and every other plant material containing cellulose. There is every indication that such technology will be very important in the decades to come and that it will no longer be necessary to ferment food for ethanol at all—relying instead on corn shucks, stalks, straw, hay, pulp, etc. So, it makes sense to grow the market for ethanol today to provide incentives and markets for this coming technology.
But all that is too complicated for modern sound-bite framing. So, I recommend using this simple frame when discussing ethanol production: Is Feeding the Hungry More Important than Staying Obese and Diseased?
Our answer to that question could potentially transform society forever, and for the better.
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Marc Baber develops websites and proudly drives a 2000 Chevy Metro, using 10% ethanol fuel from Sequential Biofuels in Eugene, Oregon.
[1] “Republicans target ethanol mandate”, Matthew Perrone, Associated Press/Eugene Register-Guard, May 6, 2008.
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| 7 comments |
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Ethanolics
Your cynicism is magnifique. Spectabulous. You're not one of those who will be deciding who lives and dies in the hospital I hope. Ethanol can't be pipelined to where it is needed. So it has to be transported. F'in brilliant. Burn it while trying to deliver it. Half way solution again from the social architects. This drives up prices of fuel gas or ethanol. This drives up prices of transported food. It also damages the inside of vehicle parts. Architects, go home. Let the engineers do their job. The increase in corn planting for ethanol means less land for other crops, driving up food prices again. That drives up food prices because businesses do a bit of trading and speculating in a rather careless one size fits all pattern looking at technical indicators like candlesticks instead of fundamental indicators. by Intelitary Milligence (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 40 comments) on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 10:12:29 AM  (0+)
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Reply: Well I'll be an Irish gerbil's uncle
Had to read that again. My apologies. I misread. I still stand by the engineering flaws of ethanol even if the architecture is mostly reasonable. We need to evolve past the wheel. We need to use energy to accelerate not to maintain speed (except against aerodynamic and electromagnetic drag). by Intelitary Milligence (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 40 comments) on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 12:31:27 PM (0+)
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Commercial Ethanol is Dead
Since science and efficiency are so obviously against widespread commercial production of corn-based ethanol, I'll address the financial aspect. While I am progressive in most of my views, "progressive" does not mean "stupid" to me. I support a group called Downsize D.C., which is against government waste. They often use the term "small government," which I agree with in theory, but am averse to the term because of the generally Republican "tax-everyone-but-me and spend" connotation. The group is non-partisan, and I don't support all of their projects, but big commercial ethanol is something I agree with them on. Their newsletter today says, in part: Subject: Is ethanol running out of gas? This is the problem with going into something without knowing the consequences. Whether we should have anticipated the problems with ethanol or not, we now know that it is not viable. But now we will have to fight the folks who stand to get richer at the expense to the planet and taxpayers. Wind and solar are the only way to go, and the longer we put it off, the closer we come to the point at which it won't matter anyway. by JC Garrett (40 articles, 65 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 604 comments [10 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 1:06:10 PM (0+)
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Rebuttal
Intelitary Milligence: You claim there are flaws but don't say what they are or provide any references for your conclusion. Being an engineer (software), I have a tendency to dismiss unsupported arguments. JC Garrett: You claim there are problems with ethanol but don't say what they are or provide references for your conclusions. Your comments re: the lack of incentives for lobbyists to fight for the public interest in Washington may be true in the absence of any kind of collective public interest lobbying, such as Nader has long championed with the "PIRG" movement, but this point is only relevant if one is already convinced that ethanol is not in the public interest. Since I maintain ethanol is in the public interest because it reduces dependence on foreign oil and is a sustainable source of energy, I am unpersuaded by this point. Wind and solar can provide electricity, but transportation tends to require higher density energy storage than is possible with electricity or even with electrically-produced hydrogen. The existing fleet of autos and jets will require hydrocarbon fuel and ethanol can help reduce our dependence on foreign oil (reducing the necessity of oil wars). Longer term, I favor wind- & solar-produced hydrogen for automobiles, trucks (short haul only), trains (long haul, efficient, low rolling-resistance) and ships (augmented by a new generation of high-tech windsails), but it appears that only ethanol will be able to meet the requirements for jet planes and serve as a shorter-term bridge fuel for the existing fleets of vehicles. Please see "Solartopia" by Harvey Wasserman for a more detailed description of a positive and possible energy future. Also, please provide facts and references if you wish to support your arguments against ethanol. I think that both of you have missed the main point of my article which is that any decisions about how to wisely use our essentially finite corn crop, must not ignore the wasteful uses of corn for animal feed and unhealthy "foods" such as high-fructose corn syrup. Ethanol is a far better use of corn than either of these and we should seek to limit these, older, harmful, legacy uses of corn first, before we jump to limit ethanol. I would only be in favor of limiting ethanol if that was the only way to feed people, but, as I've shown in my article, that is not the case. by Marcus B (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 27 comments) on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 2:52:59 PM (0+)
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Ethanol
Ethanol is very bad for the environment. It causes air pollution by producing smog. Air pollution causes health problems so this drives up the cost of healthcare also. by Ty (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 888 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 8:53:48 PM (0+)
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Hmmm....
Couldn't think of anything else to write about? by Zena Princess (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 89 comments) on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 8:17:12 AM (0+)
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Ethanol is LESS polluting that conventional gasoline
Thank you Ty Shlackman-- Yes we should minimize pollution first by driving less and using more fuel efficient cars, however, secondly, we should use the least polluting fuels we can and ethanol (including ethanol blends) is significantly less polluting than conventional gasoline: "Currently, transportation is the largest single source of air pollution in the United States producing nearly two-thirds of the carbon monoxide, a third of the nitrogen oxides, and a quarter of the hydrocarbons in our atmosphere. Adding ethanol to gasoline changes that formula dramatically. Ethanol burns more cleanly than gasoline, so the more ethanol you add to your fuel mixture, the less pollution your car produces. Cars using E10 emit 20 percent less carbon monoxide than those burning conventional gasoline, while cars running E85 emit a full 40 percent less. Consumer Reports magazine recently took a flex-fuel Chevrolet Tahoe to a Connecticut emissions test facility and had it tested using both E85 and conventional gasoline. “We found a significant decrease in smog-forming oxides of nitrogen when using E85,” the magazine reported." From http://www.rangefuels.com/ethanol_the_pollution_solution Welcome to Zena as well. Perhaps Corn is a boring topic, but I find this issue a fascinating fusion of hunger, sustainable energy and public health with the added complexity of competing "frames" (George Lakoff spoke here in Eugene a couple weeks ago and was rather inspiring). Sorry if it doesn't seem a worthy topic to you, but I believe the most important problems of our times are all inter-related: global warming, oil, war, propaganda, pollution, public health, and if we begin with any one problem and start unraveling it, the rest will also come undone until we've reinvented our society in a way that's more sustainable, healthy, honest and just. by Marcus B (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 27 comments) on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 11:09:56 AM (0+)
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