The secret, dirty cost of Obama's green power push

[DesMoinesDem]

The secret, dirty cost of Obama's green power push

...

The ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.

As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.

Five million acres of land set aside for conservation — more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined — have vanished on Obama's watch.

Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.

Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can't survive.

The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.

...

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-dirty-cost-obamas-green-power-push-0

[blogslut]

1. I'm no fan of the overfarming of corn

But this slanty/scary story with its misleading headline is pretty awful.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. I saw this article and wanted to post it

The way ethanol is ravaging the environment is practically a crime but I demurred because of the way it seems to peg everything on Obama, even the parts where the article admit Bush signed a law.

[blogslut]

5. Not to mention the blanket term "green power".

One sentence quickly mentioning that some (patriotic buzzphrase) bald eagles got killed by wind turbines and that justifies painting the entire sustainable energy movement with a bad brush, while 95% of the article is devoted to the harm caused by ethanol.

[Berlum]

2. ...not to mention the GMO mutant pollen released, and the billions of gallons of glyphosate

a total mutant-corporate clusterf*ck...

[frazzled]

3. Well, there's no winning on this one

Because if you're anti-ethanol, you're also aligning yourself with the oil industry and Tea Partiers, not just a segment of environmentalists (and not all). On the other hand, if you're pro-ethanol, you're aligning yourself with ... oh, just leave it as you can't win on this one.

The Obama administration may be about to hand the oil industry a major victory by reducing the federal requirement for blending ethanol into fuel — a decision with big implications for farm-state politics, food prices and the nation’s energy markets.

As early as Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce how many billions of gallons of ethanol it will require refiners to blend into gasoline and diesel fuel in 2014. If it sticks with a draft version that leaked in October, the agency will lower the amount to 2012 levels.

The debate over how much ethanol should be forced into the American gasoline supply pits powerhouse special interests against each other. On the pro-ethanol side: the renewable fuels industry, corn growers and many Midwestern lawmakers. On the anti-ethanol side: the oil industry, restaurant owners, livestock and poultry producers and, increasingly, a disenchanted environmental movement that no longer believes the plant-based fuel is a greener alternative to fossil fuels. In addition, a new generation of tea party Republicans — viscerally opposed to government mandates and fuel subsidies — has joined the fight against ethanol.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/ethanol-epa-biofuel-blending-gasoline-agriculture-99689.html#ixzz2kSWXwkPU

[Bandit]

6. Not sure I understand what is so green about ethanol. It puts out Carbon Dioxide just like petroluem

While it is renewable it still is for internal combustion engines....We need electric, and we need to be more creative with how we produce our electricity..

[jeff47]

7. The CO2 it puts out was recently in the atmosphere - it's not adding new CO2.

Burning oil means releases "new" CO2 into the atmosphere, increasing the concentration of CO2.

Burning ethanol from plants doesn't increase the concentration of CO2 - the plant took the same CO2 out of the atmosphere a few months ago.

[bananas]

10. Plants literally build themselves out of thin air.

The carbon in plants comes from CO2 in the atmosphere.
So there's no net increase in CO2 when you burn the ethanol.

[Gravitycollapse]

11. If the goal is to carbon capture, we should probably look at other methods.

Because briefly capturing and then emitting CO2 isn't going to help.

[bananas]

12. That's not the goal.

The goal is to keep warming below 2 degrees C.

Biofuel, wind, solar, nuclear don't caption carbon, they generate electricity without generating CO2.

"Carbon capture" usually refers to trying to capture the CO2 coming out the smokestack of a coal plant.

[Gravitycollapse]

13. You realize there can be more than one goal, right? So, yes, carbon capture is the goal.

Either by conventional methods like reforestation or through futuristic methods like scrubbers.

We've already surpassed level at which the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is dangerous. We have to stop releasing it now AND we need to try and recapture emitted CO2.

[jeff47]

8. Keep in mind there's two kinds of ethanol

Ethanol from plant sugars, and cellulosic ethanol.

To get ethanol from plant sugars, you need a high-sugar plant, and you can only use part of the plant. Brazil has done great with ethanol from sugar cane, but we don't have the right climate for that. So we're burning ethanol from corn. The only place we can get the sugar is from the kernels - the rest of the plant is waste. And it's competing with food production, and other "unpleasant" effects enumerated in the article.

Cellulosic ethanol comes from breaking down any part of any plant to produce ethanol. It typically uses fast-growing non-food plants we normally call "weeds". It doesn't compete with food production, and the plants do not need as much care when growing.

Effective cellulosic ethanol is pretty new - it took quite a while to figure out how to do it on an industrial scale.

So it's not "ethanol" that's the problem. Or even ethanol from plant sugars. It's ethanol from corn.

[geek tragedy]

9. There's no such thing as clean energy that goes into cars.

Hybrids run on electricity generated by nuclear and coal power, or from ecosystem-destroying dams.

Want to stop ethanol and its problems? Don't drive.

[babylonsister]

14. From 2007? And who started this push? Try harder!

Granted, it sucks, but come on.

[RBInMaine]

15. Obama, Obama, Obama... More Obama-bashing from the TeaLeft. Yawn.