Seven years ago Indur Goklany, an economist formerly with the U.S. Department of the Interior and associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its inception in 1988 as an author, expert reviewer, and U.S. delegate to the organization, concluded a thorough analysis of the effect of American biofuels policy on the world's poor with these words: ... the production of biofuels [in the U.S.] may have led to at least 192,000 additional deaths and 6.7 million additional lost … [Read more...]
What Would the Precautionary Principle Imply for Ethanol?
In 2007 Congress passed a law requiring the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to study and report every three years to Congress on the environmental impact of EPA’s ethanol mandate. And in the intervening nine years, EPA has complied with the law once—in 2011. Now it says it’ll be 2024 before it can manage it again. So by the time it should have filed five such reports and be working on its sixth, EPA expects to file its second. Meanwhile, multiple studies not done by EPA have … [Read more...]
Ethanol: A Federally Mandated Killer
Terry Scanlon of the Capital Research Center leads his latest email this way: When you gas your car with 10% ethanol, you're dragged into the Renewable Fuel Standard morass run by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). This environmentalist policy is so terrible, even the greens have turned against it. But as a government program, it's immortal. Our latest "Green Watch" documents how this disaster funnels money from consumers to crony capitalists, reduces your car's mileage, raises food … [Read more...]
End Federal Ethanol Policy’s Harm to the Poor and the Environment
To borrow a phrase from another debate (where it is misused), the science is settled. So is the economics. As Peter Suderman points out, the federal Environmental Protection Agency proposes reducing from 18.5 billion to 15.2 billion gallons the amount of renewable fuel (essentially, ethanol, almost all from corn) it requires refiners to mix into total U.S. gasoline production each year. Well, the longest journey begins with a single step. But this journey could be completed in one fell … [Read more...]
Biofuels Forcing World to Ration Food Aid
The World Food Program is preparing to ration food aid for the world's hungriest poor. Why? Primarily because we're burning food in our automobiles. The rich-country mandates for biofuels have doubled and tripled world food prices in less than three years. The World Food Program's costs are rising by millions of dollars per week and the donations aren't, warns WFP executive director Josette Sheeran. The WFP is trying to feed more than 70 million people in 78 countries with voluntary … [Read more...]
