Stimulus dollars should go to good biofuels, not more for bad
- Nathanael Greene
- Director of Renewable Energy Policy, New York City
- Blog | About
- Posted December 19, 2008 in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
This post on the Wall St. Journal's Washington Wire blog added some specificity to the rumors I've been hearing that the biofuels industry is pushing for some financial support as part of the economic recovery package likely to move early next year. This prompted us to send this letter around the Hill today urging legislators not to throw more good money after bad biofuels, but rather start redirecting all of our myriad biofuels subsidies towards good biofuels.
In fact, I would say (and the letter urges) that we really just focus our precious financial resources on getting the first billion gallons of advanced biofuels up and running and running in the best possible environmental way. Only by proving to ourselves that we can actually produce at least 1 billion gallons of biofuels in a way that delivers on the environmental promises of this industry can we start to build--or rebuild--any consensus around moving forward.
As the letter says:
The conventional biofuels industry is fully mature and has long enjoyed generous federal mandates, tax policies, and subsidies. In 2008 alone the biofuels industry received $10 billion in tax payer money.
And:
Getting the first billion gallons of “advanced” biofuels, including cellulosic biofuels, from more environmentally benign sources and into the marketplace will demonstrate that they are technically and economically feasible, and will begin to move the industry in a more environmentally positive direction.
And finally,
Congress can begin by funding through the stimulus package EISA section 207’s biofuel grant program and the Biomass Research and Development Act. Finally, the USDA Biomass Crop Assistance Program should be fully funded as soon as possible and directed to develop biomass feedstocks that demonstrably decrease greenhouse gas emissions, avoid deforestation and the conversion of natural habitat, and improve our soil and water resources relative to current uses for these lands.
As our nation finally begins in earnest to move beyond dirty fuels that exacerbate the climate crisis, we urge you to invest critical funding in the economic recovery legislation in moving towards more environmentally protective bioenergy rather than harmful, conventional biofuels.
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Comments
Cye Gossett — Dec 20 2008 07:35 PM
Nathanael, I have many things I could say to you. Firstly, I agree with your work in environmentalism, but you need to take some ecology and regulatory policy courses, And, I know that the City can be lacking in ecology, so try Brookhaven or the University of Maine.
You need some basic ecology in systems theory and knowledge and more basic ecology courses on eco-structures and communities along with agosystems and logistical systems.
I don't agree with your approach. I have a Ph.D from NYC in environmental and political economics. I am also an evolutionary and eco-system ecologist and hard core Hempel/Popper Scientific Methods researcger. You need this discipline in order to find yourself in your work.
Also, I was trained in New Mexico and have lived in the west where UC has missed its science far too many times. They are great researchers, but poor at application. They are not very good engineers, when it comes to the environemnt. England, France and Germany are better, but the Germans can get rather totalitarian. They have made some messes.
For about 30 years, I have been working and watching the global human population grow and grow and Califronia build more and more unsafe and unsound housing on the ocean with great pollution to follow and on quake faults, while they poison their "peasant" farmers in their pesticide filthy fields of food.
I am not denying that they have done some great agro-organic food movements, just not the group from Santa Cruz, who has gotten money from the "plantation" bad foods federal farm bill and "play at organics" and certainly not the USDA. California in its crystal-dream-stage, Post-Vietnam world has some horrible spots to clean and some people in bad health. And your algae dream for cars will swim with the fishes.
You are right that we must have clean energy, but we must also have pure organic foods for humans and animals and the "food-chain," not those stamped organic by the USDA. So we have to find a way to correlate the ago-industry and health of the planet with logistics and transporation, in both cases "ENERGY" They cannot be seperated even in terms of global warming.
We must dump most of our bio-diesel ideas, clean up our lands, water and air, except for that 10% bio-diesel, plant many more trees, and start taking care of our regional environemnts with regional logistical strategies. We must go to trains, trolleys and some combustion, an ships on water when it is not huge ships dumping pollutrion out in the ocean and up the rivers. We have to start with regional ecomonics and trade, with regional agriculture and trade and with regional care of each place on our planet, not nation states. We are seeing some of the last of the big "free trade" deals.
Are you aware that the GE and GMO of the ago killer companies with corn, soy, etc., has polluted so many thousand of acres that may never be viable for clean food even in your children's lifetimes? And with more of this, comes more and more starvation. So you may have to live and walk, or get a horse, if this does not slow.
And there is this matter of diversity. Rarely, in natural eco-systems, are they mono, almost never. So you can not grow boxes and water units by the hundreds and thousands for algae and it not do harm to the environemt. That is an ecological law. And GE and GMO have done this creating more and more of their "clones" for more mon-cropping.
And you cannot use pesticide or chemicals of any kind that are not eco-system friendly.
Now can you see why acres of corn, or acres of algae will begin to deplete and go out of balance? If we are to do ago-fuels not only do we not have enough land on which to make that possible, we don't have enough time. And all of the money given by the government that you are now wanting to tap into is "polluted" money, it has caused more damange than the new stimulas has the money for cleaning up the mess they have already made with bio-fuels.
It is understandable that your dream of algae is your pet projecg, but we will have to go Post-modern, which also meand pre-Modern to get any type of balance on this planet now. It is not just a matter of global warming, but a matter of bad health form bad foods, and the death of medicinal plants.
Greenpeace just sent me a notification of a dire eco-system disaster, if it occurs. It seems that the US and other G countries have began to strike deals with the State's governments in Brazil, rather than the Central Government. They are buying leases to take out the entire Amazonia forest and I mean all of it for capitalists resources. Should this occur, we will loose so much diversity that we will be past saving ourselves from global warming. And, we will then have laterite soils that will never grow anything again, I mean ever grow anything again, rather than fields for bio-fuels. Now that makes the bio-fuels, including algae impossible.
Modernity has linked a bad idea of Hitler's authobahns to clean food, and land.
Cye G
Running at least partially on celluloidic and ethanol will not work scientifically. Yes, it will theoretically produce less CO2. Carbon, but Good dream but, not viable. Most cars are built to run on 10% ethanol, but no more. There are dreams of 85% ethanol cars, but that is also not possible. For evidence of this you can go to the real energy scientists, some currently working for Obama, but others at MIT,
What everyone has to understand is that we don't just have an oil and gas industry, we have a food energy (one that has to be pure organic to keep humans healthey and one that goes far beyond a % organic. There is no such thing.
So, how abou this? Have a look at Monsanto, ARM, Siemans, etc., and the GE messes they have made around the globe, then correlate this to global hunger and dirty foods (none has engines that can run on more than that right now. allowed. They also have not done a very good job with their deadly pesticide use (see PANNA). vironmental ago-business going on that we can learn from. But, as I have been forced analyse their estuaries, there beach front properties and their dirty foods that killing children and farem workder I wonder how sound their ideas are often-times?
II suppose I find most of California university paradigms to be great beginnings that have to be tested and retested with sound scientific methods and real evolutionary, and eco-community and agro-ecology by someone other than Califronia.
I also have to ask, how GREEN is Ms. Browner? She is not a real student of ecology, a
AND this was going to happen at least once. I do hope that Obama awakens to the bio-fuel HYPE
I primaily agree with you that in some cases ccorn equal the cost of oil to use, but I do nnot agree with the use of Ethanol or bio-ffuels and I am a professor who lectures on ttherm-dynamics.
Cye Gossett — Dec 20 2008 07:44 PM
Sorry, about that last part above, I edited this piece, but something has happened in subsission. Read the last after Cye G or ignore it. I will redo this and send a better copy of this last part later.
Thanks,
Cye Gossett