The cover headline for the April 7^th issue of Time Magazine, “The Clean Energy Myth” becomes “The Clean Energy Scam” as we read the article. Maybe the “myth” to “scam” transition helps punch up the story which begins with the “destruction” of the Amazon jungle from deforestation by Brazilian cattlemen, displaced from their pastures by Brazilian soybean farmers expanding to fill the vacuum created by US soybean farmers switching to corn production in response to higher corn prices driven by the rapidly growing, US-government-subsidized bio-fuel industry.

 

The deforestation is what, as the Time article would have it, mythologizes the cleanliness claim for bio-fuels. In theory bio-fuels are carbon-neutral: the carbon released when they are burned is absorbed from the atmosphere as the next crop grows. But absorption capacity of the corn crop is no match for the absorption capacity of the lost forest. Plus carbon is emitted in the clearing process. Additionally, the corn ethanol production process uses tractors, petroleum-based fertilizers and emits “lots of carbon” in the distillation process. The conclusion is alarming: bio-fuel production is going to mean “the worst of everything: higher food prices, more deforestation and more emissions.”

 

The article does give passing mention to some of the acknowledged plusses and some of the answers to the charges against biofuels. The plusses—faintly praised—are that, “biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil” and “the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses.” Answers to the charges are asides: “sugarcane ethanol is much cleaner,” “biofuels created from waste products that don’t gobble up land have real potential,” “the experts…[are] calling for better biofuels that won’t trigger massive carbon releases by displacing wildland.” Biofuel advocates envision improved crop yields, and alternative feedstocks including municipal trash, agricultural waste, algae…and even prairie grasses—“as long as they’re grown on “degraded lands” that can no longer support food crops or cattle”, is also noted.

 

One of the oft-cited experts, a former Environmental Defense Attorney and lead author of a recently published scholarly article on the environment cost of “cropland creep” is even quoted as acknowledging that “biofuels can be an (advantage) if they don’t use arable land.” The article seems to come to a negative conclusion on the bio-fuel issue. “Strange as it sounds” [quoting the above-noted expert] “ we’re better off growing food and drilling for oil.”

 

As the accelerating increases in food prices attract more media coverage, biofuel production is likely to be increasingly targeted as the main culprit. Ethanol may not be what we find in a fuel station 10 years from now.