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.

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.