Michael Giberson
Food-to-fuel mandates were created for the right reasons. The hope of using American-grown crops to fuel our cars seemed like a win-win-win scenario: Our farmers would enjoy the benefit of crop-price stability. Our national security would be enhanced by having a new domestic energy source. Our environment would be protected by a cleaner fuel. But the likelihood of these outcomes was never seriously tested, and new evidence has shown that the justifications for these mandates were inaccurate.
Also, the national security argument for ethanol always struck me as false. We import most of our oil from Canada and Mexico, and with oil a fungible product in an international market, it is hard to see just how some other nation might wield oil-withholding as an offensive threat.
(In fact, there is some danger that all ethanol technologies will be unfairly tainted by an association with current failed policies mostly intended to drive up corn prices. Supporters of non-corn-based alternatives for making ethanol may want to distance themselves from the pork-barrel politicking of the agribusiness lobby.)
The Brown and Lewis editorial does bother me in parts. Does most of the energy used to make ethanol actually come from coal? I would have guessed oil for fuel and natural gas for fertilizer. Also, like many people (myself included), Brown and Lewis are eager to blame world-wide high food prices on ethanol policy, but most of the analysis I’ve seen in the newspapers is thin. The argument makes a lot of sense, but there are other obvious factors (high fuel costs, increasing world demand for meat consumption, increasing world demand for food generally), so it would be nice to see a careful sorting out of the contributing factors.
The conclusion, however, is good:
[I]t is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed. Congress took a big chance on biofuels that, unfortunately, has not worked out. Now, in the spirit of progress, let us learn the appropriate lessons from this setback, and let us act quickly to mitigate the damage and set upon a new course that holds greater promise for meeting the challenges ahead.
(HT to Tim Haab at Environmental Economics)
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