President Trump does something right
The fact that it was Donald Trump who was doing that, and doing that on those grounds, very nearly sent shivers of shock, amazement, pleasure, and gratitude up and down my spine. When Mr. Trump does something right, I try to go out of my way to praise him for it. It happens seldom enough to be remarkable, and though of course, he doesn't read this blog we know that praising him is the one way to get him to respond to anything favorably. So on the off-chance that he might happen to see this someday, I might as well maximize my chances of influencing him by giving him his due.
I am an Iowan- a naturalized Iowan, it's true, but nevertheless an Iowan. So saying this is close to treason. But here goes: ethanol is a scam. Yeah, that's what I said. A politician- whether a native Iowan or a presidential candidate contesting the caucuses- requires considerable courage to say that out loud. In fact, for a politician in most parts of this state, it would probably be political suicide.
While I was not a regular viewer of The West Wing, I liked the show. It wasn't nearly as obnoxiously partisan as it might have been. The show's frank, honest, and completely appropriate liberal and Democratic perspective pulled my cork often enough that the aggravation didn't quite equal the entertainment value, which was considerable, especially for a political junkie such as myself.
But I remember the episode in the last season entitled "King Corn." The candidates in both parties to succeed President Bartlett were campaigning in Iowa before the caucuses, and all of them- including the one eventually elected as the new president, Rep. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits)- bent the knee before King Corn and endorsed continued ethanol subsidies. All, that is, except Santos's eventual Republican opponent and ultimate Secretary of State, Sen. Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda), who had the courage and integrity to call a scam a scam even while campaigning in a state where the scam is wildly popular.
Well, ethanol subsidies are a scam, and President Trump was right to take at least a tiny step in the right direction by granting waivers to a few small refineries from the expensive Federal requirement to use ethanol in the production of gasoline, which is a scam in and of itself. It makes absolutely no sense by any possible criteria, as we'll see below.
Mind you, Mr. Trump has kissed the corn cob, too, both during the past campaign and even now, as he seeks to mollify farmers already angered by the impact of his trade war with China, one of the major markets for American agriculture. But hey. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I want to be fair. When Donald Trump does something right- even a very small something- I am more than willing to give him due credit. And the fact of the matter is that ethanol production and the mandates which artificially sustain it in defiance of the laws of economics and common sense are ruinously expensive, energy-inefficient, poor use of agricultural resources, and- all the propaganda to the contrary- not only unsustainable but bad for the environment.
This article from the University of Minnesota economics professor C. Ford Runge documents the negative effects of ethanol- especially at the higher levels currently being advocated by its partisans- on everything from mileage to engine health to meat prices (corn is used to feed livestock, and more use of corn for ethanol will mean that it would be more profitable to use the corn that way than to use it to feed cows and pigs) and even air quality. Yes, additives to gasoline do affect the levels of ozone and related health hazards. But ethanol also causes them. In fact, Stanford's Mark Jacobson estimates that the E85 fuel required by "flex-fuel" vehicles might increase ozone-related mortality, asthma, and air quality-related hospital admissions by four percent nationally and nine percent in Los Angeles as compared with gasoline.
As Cornell University agricultural scientist David Pimentel flat out says, "Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning."
Pimentel points out that the average acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn, enough to produce 328 gallons of ethanol. But producing the corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels at a cost of $347 per acre. Even before it becomes ethanol, the corn needed to produce it costs $1.05 for each gallon of ethanol.
As many as three fermentation steps are required to separate the eight percent ethanol from the 92% water. More treatment and more energy are needed to create the 98.9% pure ethanol that is mixed with gasoline. Adding up the energy costs, 131,000 BTUs of energy are needed to produce one gallon of ethanol- which itself yields only 77,000 BTUs of energy!
Yes, that's right. Producing a gallon of ethanol requires 54,000 BTUs more energy than the gallon of ethanol itself produces 70% more energy is required to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy that is actually in the ethanol!
It costs $1.74 to produce a gallon of ethanol, compared to 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline. As Pimentel observes, fossil fuels have to be used to produce ethanol because using ethanol would be too expensive! In fact, he points out, without the Federal subsidies, U.S. drivers couldn't afford to buy ethanol-blended gasoline to put in their gas tanks!
The fact of the matter is that far from being a "greener" approach to fueling our automobiles, ethanol is simply bad for the environment. "Corn production in the U.S. erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of groundwater," Pimentel says. "The environmental system in which corn is being produced is being rapidly degraded. Corn should not be considered a renewable resource for ethanol energy production, especially when human food is being converted into ethanol."
Approximately $1 billion a year are spent on state and federal subsidies for ethanol production. The average American automobile, driving 10,000 miles a year on pure ethanol (in fact, of course, ethanol is only 10% of ethanol-gasoline blended fuel) would require 11 acres of farmland to fuel. That is the same amount of farmland required to feed seven Americans for a year. And if all American automobiles were fueled by pure ethanol, it would require 97% of the available farmland in the United States. America would, to all intents and purposes, be covered in corn from sea to shining sea, with none of it being used to feed livestock or human beings
But that's not the sort of thing you say if you are a politician in Iowa, or even a presidential candidate from either party contesting the Caucuses. Ethanol makes a great deal of money for Iowa farmers even if it doesn't actually do the environment much good. Now, given the devastation, Mr. Trump has inflicted on farmers in Iowa and elsewhere through his trade war with China, a good customer in normal times of its agricultural products, Mr. Trump is already in dutch with Iowa farmers, as well as those in Kansas, Nebraska, and several other agricultural states he carried in 2016 and will have to carry more or less as a bloc if he is going to have any chance of being re-elected next year. So if I thought for the moment that he'd actually thought this through, I would have to give him major points for courage and principle- neither words I usually associate with the man- by not prostituting the public interest to quite the traditional extent in this particular matter.
Comments