Subsidizing world hunger

New figures show that one-quarter of U.S. grain crops go toward feeding cars with ethanol fuel and not feeding people. The United States is also the world’s leading grain exporter.

Biofuels and food are intimately connected. The history is rooted in subsidizing the U.S. corn industry, which has backed policy makers who want to end corn subsidies into a corner because of political opposition from corn-producing states. Politicians from these states aren’t likely to support policy that ends the guaranteed flow of federal dollars into their state, even if it is at the expense of world hunger and environmental degradation.

In 2007, the Bush administration signed a “pact” with Brazil to promote ethanol production for the international market. The catch was that the United States would impose a sizable tariff on Brazil’s sugarcane and sugarbeet fuel to give corn-based fuel grown here at home the advantage, effectively eliminating the U.S. market for Brazil’s sugarcane-based ethanol.

Congress in the same year mandated that the nation get an increasing amount of its fuel from biofuels, part of that could come from grain-based fuels like corn ethanol. Investments flooded the ethanol industry and by 2009, U.S. farmers doubled corn ethanol production.

The most efficient way to produce large amounts of corn is to use nitrogen-based fertilizers, but the runoff of these fertilizers are mostly responsible for the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of square miles so depleted of oxygen that sea life suffocates.

The pressure of the ethanol market and the assurance of subsidies and tariffs from the government have scientists and environmentalists worried that nitrogen pollution will only get worse. But U.S. taxpayers still subsidize ethanol production to the tune of nearly $6 billion per year.

The connection between grain-based biofuels and food prices is a scary and underestimated
concern because using grain to feed cars and not people drives up the price of meat, dairy, and any food made of or fed grain, like livestock. Combined with climate change, the risk of starvation to communities around the world is too great, especially in a future where basic food ingredients are unaffordable or inaccessible to those who need it most.

Promoting unfettered production of corn and grain ethanol without fully analyzing the impact to world food prices and environmental degradation is short sided at best, and at worse, a dangerous step toward global food insecurity.

As the leading grain exporter, and one of the largest donor’s of humanitarian aid around the world, the United States has a stake in reversing the trend of global hunger. Policies and subsidies ramming the production of grain-based ethanol forward is likely to further increase food prices, which exacerbate world hunger and push more to need humanitarian assistance.

In his campaign in 2008, Obama praised ethanol as a measure that “ultimately helps our national security, because right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth.”

Not much has changed since then. Recently the EPA backed corn ethanol as a way of meeting the congressional mandate for biofuels set in 2007.

Grain and corn are not the only measure to propel the United States as a leading producer of ethanol. ExxonMobil has launched a program to produce biofuels from photosynthetic algae , which could prove to be more efficient than grain-based biofuels. Other ideas for producing ethanol use enzymes to break down inedible parts of plants, such as corncobs .

Ethanol is an inevitable ingredient for the future of our auto-centric society, but subsidizing corn/grain to produce fuel and not food is something that will counter serious action on climate change. The world is becoming increasingly hungry as environmental degradation pushes more communities to unsustainable lifestyles. The last thing this country - this planet - needs is the greenwashing of ill-advised policies to address the most serious environmental threat to humanity: climate change.

Winter hiking at Baker Lake

It's January, and it's the perfect time for a backpacking trip in the Pacific Northwest. The slate gray clouds are bunched high in the sky; the rain is holding off. It's an El Niño winter this year. The moisture that usually drenches Washington is in the southwest, causing floods in California and Arizona.

When you are looking for a winter backpacking destination in NW Washington, Baker Lake is first on most lists. Low elevation to avoid most of the snow? Check. Easy access? Check. Beautiful old-growth forest, along the banks of a pristine aquamarine river? You can count on it. It's a picture-perfect introduction to the temperate rainforest of Western Washington.

Saturday morning, 9 a.m. My partner and I pack up and stack our packs in the back of a van the same slate gray as the sky. Most important items: extra socks, tent, thermos of chicken soup, puffy jacket, and three cans of coconut milk.

The signs of civilization start to dwindle as soon as we reach Burlington, an agricultural hub turned strip-mall that hugs the north shore of the Skagit River. We head east from here, winding through Sedro Wooley and onto the North Cascades Highway.

Baker lake is a two-hour drive from Bellingham, and after an hour or so we are cruising up the Skagit Valley. Small farms line the road, and the steep hills on either side rise sharply and are cut by deep valleys. The checkerboard of clearcuts on the flanks of the hills is a constant reminder of this culture's impact on the land here.

"Forests to precede civilizations, deserts to follow." That is what the founder of the Romantic movement, François-René, wrote in 1840. His words ring true as we turn north, up the Baker River valley, passing dessicated clearcuts that wrap around hills and following the twisting path of the river deeper into the rainforest.

At the border of Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, the trees change. Four or five old, long dead trees stand to the left, and the canopy closes in over the road. The road changes to gravel before too long, and then the lake is there, suddenly and brilliantly. The water is low and turquoise, exposing the shallowly sloping lakebed dotted with massive, gnarled stumps.

Baker Lake is not entirely natural. In 1925, a 285-foot dam was built further down the Baker River Valley, creating Lake Shannon, a population fishing and recreation destination in its own right that sits just to the South of Baker Lake. And Iin 1959, the 312-foot- tall Upper Baker Dam was built to expand the size of Baker Lake and provide hydroelectric power to businesses and residents of Skagit and Whatcom Counties. The dam provided easy transportation for timber cut from what is now the bottom of Baker Lake.

A few miles drift past in a blur of water and thick trees and roadcuts, and we reach the parking lot: the end of the road. Moss hangs like drapes from branches lining the trail. A Western Red Cedar, perfectly circular and 10-feet-thick, marks the place where the path narrows and begins to wind along the river, slowly gaining elevation.

Our destination is less than three miles upstream, so we walk slowly, taking off our packs to explore caves made by the jumble of boulders. On a sand bar jutting out into the river, coyote and bobcat and elk have left their footprints. A cedar tree clasps a boulder like a octopus gripping a crab firmly in it's tentacles. Licorice ferns spill out of cracks and crevices in the rocks, or attach themselves to the maple trees that cover the floodplain of the river.

The trail meanders though thick trees, with occasional views across the river to the hulking foothills or to waterfalls cascading down red and blue striped cliffs. A wetland created by beavers marks the last section of the trail, and a small sign proclaims we are leaving the National Forest and entering North Cascades National Park.

A few minutes later, we reach our campsite at Sulphide Creek, a murky place that takes its name from the tributary it sits beside. Here we discover the importance of good packing: we had packed two tent rainflies, but no tent body. Two hours and a good bit of ingenuity later, and we have a somewhat functional shelter - providing it doesn't rain. Bellies full of coconut curry a few hours later, we turn in, the sounds of the water pulling us gently into sleep.

In the morning, after a brisk dip in the creek (accompanied shrieking and the nice views of the Cloudcap Peak to the north), the walk back to the parking lot seems a quick jaunt. But the car ride back to civilization - and back to work - seems long. Come spring, I'll be back.

Citizen lobbying as direct democracy

Olympia, Wash. - Citizens walking to meet their legislators

What do you call it when 500 lobbyists - all in one room - are planning strategies to convince politicians to support one thing? Some might argue the end of our democratic system. But on Jan. 26, these lobbyists represented the true essence of democracy.

Citizen activists flexed their muscles Tuesday when 500 citizens descended on Olympia Wash., to lobby their elected officials in support of the environment.

In a church several blocks from the dome-shaped legislative building in Olympia, pews were filled with people wearing green scarves at 8:30 a.m., patiently waiting as the last few people trickled in. Standing at the altar was the founder of People for Puget Sound, and the creator of Lobby Day - Kathy Fletcher.

The Environmental Priorities Coalition, an organization in Washington made up of many other environmental groups, facilitated the Lobby Day event by scheduling meetings and training sessions for citizens to lobby their representatives.

The Coalition provided material support and strategies on the three priorities for this year’s Lobby Day to citizens from various legislative districts that make up Washington: Clean up polluted stormwater and waterways; ban the endocrine disruptor Bisphenol-A used in materials for baby bottles, food and beverage containers; and sustain environmental protections in the budget.


Before founding People for Puget Sound, Fletcher worked for the government agency Puget Sound Water Quality Authority, which has evolved into the Puget Sound Partnership. Fletcher is passionate about citizen involvement so she started Lobby Day in 1992 to advocate for direct democracy and citizen action in policy decisions regarding the environment.

“The only thing that was going to save Puget Sound was getting citizens together,” Fletcher said.

Petitions show a large group of people care but they have little impact on government decisions, Jessica Steinberg from the People for Puget Sound said. What’s more effective is visiting the offices of Washington’s elected officials with a group of people echoing the same position.

“Everybody here is an individual, if each one didn’t come than you're missing an important voice,” Mark Johnston from the Sierra Club said.

Naomi Botkin, volunteer for the People for Puget Sound, took the day off of work to travel to Olympia and lobby her representatives. Botkin said she would much rather take the day off of work to lobby and contribute to the voices of citizens generally unheard among the mass of business lobbyists whom do it every day.

“That’s their 9 to 5,’ Botkin said, “to lobby for or against bills that are good or not for the corporation.”

Business lobbyists work hand and hand with campaign contributions, which creates policy on an uneven playing field because businesses can spend vast amounts of money on political campaigns, Mike Sato from the People for Puget Sound said.

Sometimes these lobbyists don’t even live in Olympia, or even work for the same company. These individuals are contract lobbyists, flown in to Washington to lobby against a proposed pollution tax one day, then flown somewhere else to lobby for proposed tax cuts in another state the next.

Environmental organizations have lobbyists too. Although, their paychecks come from subscriptions and donations to the organizations so they’re generally paid less than business lobbyists who can make up to a half a million dollars or more a year, Sato said.

“The paid guns are plentiful out here,” said Jerry Joyce, a Washington resident who participated in Lobby Day.

Environmental lobbyists for the organizations in the Coalition work together by following the drafting process of bills that could impact the environment, Chris Miller, from the People for Puget Sound said.

If provisions in the bill work counter to the organization’s principles, then the lobbyists provide necessary information to craft messages for the organizations to inform citizens to come together as one voice and speak out to their legislators, Miller said.

The nearly 500 Washington citizens were not paid to participate in Lobby Day, but paid $30 for the food, materials and transportation that brought them all together in Olympia to meet their elected representatives.

Many of the Lobby Day participants were pleased with the responses from their elected officials toward the three priorities, even though they were given grim news about budgeting for certain environmental protections, such as toxic cleanup.

State Sen. Kevin Ranker from the 40th district was sympathetic to the ten constituents who crowded around his conference table, but was honest about the state’s economic situation and said more cuts to environmental protections are likely.

This year, the Coalition set up a large tent near the legislative building where they had information and even a baby-bottle-toss game to raise awareness about the harmful chemical bisphenol-A.

The work of these part-time lobbyists/citizens is far from over. The goal next year will be to broaden the presence of the Lobby Day group by tapping into the Coalition’s membership bases to get better citizen representation from districts in central, east and southeast Washington, said Rein Atteman, organizer of the Lobby Day event.

The nearly 500 people – green scarves wrapped around their necks – walking around the legislative buildings and squeezing into their representatives offices was hard to miss, even for legislators who didn’t have any visitors from the Lobby Day group.

The quantity of citizen lobbyists carried meaning far beyond the initiatives the group had went to Olympia for, it gave reassurance that individuals can have a voice in their governance.

“For [the representatives] to see a huge group of people come here to say that we support them is really inspiring,” said Jihan Grettenberger, a sophomore at Pacific Lutheran University “My voice in large numbers may matter.”

Don’t be ‘Fracking’ near my water

Climate change and reliance on fossil fuels from foreign countries are pressuring states to open fuel resources closer to home. Natural gas – a low greenhouse gas emitting fuel – is part of the mix, but the extraction process may be worse for the environment than the dirtier fuel it’s replacing.

In an environment of high unemployment, shattered economies and blotted state deficits, natural gas extraction is increasing as the demand for cheap and efficient means for heating is fueling jobs in states throughout the country, even though it may contaminate drinking water.

Natural gas companies in the U.S. have been using a method of extracting the gas through a process called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” for decades. Small pockets of gas bubbles are trapped in layers of rock, specifically shale. Shale is found across much of the contiguous 48 states and can contain lots of natural gas. Combined estimated shale deposits in the United States equal nearly 16,000 square miles.

To extract the gas, the company has to drill into the rock, pump millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals to pressurize the rock until it fractures and breaks. The gas bubbles are released from the rock and then separated from the water by the chemicals. Once the bubbles have been separated, they can be extracted from the mix.

The overabundance of shale and demand for cleaner burning fuels led to a 70 percent increase in production of the resource from 2007 to 2008.

The barrage of natural gas wells popping up around the country deserves more attention because the science behind claims of contamination is largely underexplored. What’s more, state regulators are largely underfunded to do anything about it.

The science isn’t fully settled, but studies and reports reveal these chemicals contaminate drinking water by leaching into reservoirs and aquifers, according to Propublica.org.

Hydraulic fracturing has been used for decades in the United States but hasn’t been through the extensive scientific scrutiny as other energy sources, such as oil and coal.

The number of gas-drilling wells has jumped over the past decade around the country while the number of enforcement staff and actions have primarily stayed the same or only grown slightly.

Twenty-one of the 31 states where natural gas drilling has increased do not have any regulations specific to the hydraulic fracturing, which many believe is reason enough for federal policy regarding fracking.

Water contamination from natural gas fracking sparked heated debate and protests in the 2009 mayoral election in New York City when a state environmental review fell short of banning fracking in the city’s watershed. Although, the study publicly revealed the names of 260 chemicals used in the process of hydraulic fracturing, this has given regulators more weight in determining the processes environmental impact.

Though this story has dragged in mainstream media, local media is giving voice to those concerned, especially in states like Pennsylvania and New York where large deposits of Marcellus shale have attracted massive investments.

Combined with pressure to open domestic energy sources, as well as quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, natural gas deposits in states around the country are tapping the interests of many investors with big ideas.

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens has publically rallied for federal incentives and funding to convert our truck-transport system to run on natural gas, not gasoline.

Many believe reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions must incorporate modern, renewable alternative forms of energy, like wind and solar. Others argue for a return to nuclear as a viable method to create as much energy as we do now from dirtier fuels like coal.

Any policy regarding energy extraction needs to have proper oversight to investigate if the health and environmental costs outweigh the benefits of more energy at a cheaper price.

If natural gas is an inevitable ingredient for the United States to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then it is essential to flesh out concerns and evidence of water contamination.

Welcome to The Planet Blog

We're trying something new this quarter by starting a blog in connection with The Planet magazine. Stay tuned for interesting, informative and important environmental posts.

About The Planet

The Planet is a publication class offered through the journalism department at Western Washington University. It combines the environmental focus of Western's Huxley College of the Environment with the writing and reporting skills taught in the journalism department to produce a quarterly environmental magazine.

Both writers and photographers are welcome to register for the class. Writers complete one feature article over the course of the quarter, and are encouraged to choose engaging environmental topics related to Western or the Pacific Northwest. Photographers generally shoot for to two or three different articles.

The class is advised by professor and author Bill Dietrich.