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University professor, students disagree with new EPA guidelines
Published: Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Members of the University community have raised doubts about the prudence of new biofuels guidelines issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last Wednesday. The guidelines call for increased production and use of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels in an ...(back to the article)
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So, Searchinger claims that if you use corn for ethanol, new land in Brazil is taken from the rainforest to make up for the shortfall (a carbon penalty). Then, in the next breath, he says that "No, nobody makes up for the shortfall and people are going hungry because food is taken out of production." Those two theories don't work together very well.
Well...
It's better (more productive) to grow food to use as food. You can use it to make fuel, which means means either somebody will or won't make up the shortfall. If no one does, then there will be less food; If somebody does, there will still be less food **than would have been otherwise produced in the absence of stupidly using corn for fuel.** Why? Because the second case (having someone else pick up the "food slack") is necessarily less efficient than using corn as food in the first place (otherwise, it would have already been done).
It's essentially the law of association, or comparative costs.
Of course, giving more money to special-interests (farming lobby, here) is disgusting (and unlawful) in its own right.
Even if you're right about it being less efficient, how does that mean less food? If the slack is being made up, it's being made up.
More crack science and unsubstantiated claims from another academic who wants to feel good "saving the world." How about reality, we are entirely too dependent on foreign oil coming from countries who do not like us. I'm perfectly okay to pay more to eat and to drive if it means we can achieve greater energy security.
Because it's less efficient, it is more costly, so fewer people will be able to buy it. Or the producers would produce less (because they won't make enough money). Or, consumers could buy the (more expensive) food, but have less money for other things. Any way you cut it, such artificial measures lower the standard of living and make everyone worse off.
As to "CrackScience": we're "dependent" on foreign oil in the same we we're "dependent" on farmers for food. Espousing free trade and a non-interventionist foreign policy would make foreign oil trade much less volatile and much more prosperous. Also, why should you (and the government) force me to pay more for food if I don't use oil myself?
Last time I checked there were millions of farmers around the world who compete with one antoher producing food, very unlike the handful of OPEC oil producers who have a strangle hold on production and supply. Also, let's not forget one of the coproducts from corn ethanol production is a valuable animal feed. And Ricardo, how can you say you "don't use oil", anyone who lives in America consumes products that indirectly use millions of barrels of oil to produce, package and transport.
Common Sense, you are not showing common sense.
Millions of people produce food, but certain crops grow in only certain locations.
Is your argument that we shouldn't depend on other countries for oil if they don't like us? Or that we shouldn't be using oil in the first place?
If it's the former, by your logic, if we shouldn't depend on foreign countries for oil, why should we depend on other states, or other counties, or other neighborhoods, or other houses? If you follow your anti-foreign-dependence argument to its logical conclusion, each individual should be completely self-sufficient. The reason why the people who own the oil don't like us is because of our government's interventionism there. If they got out of the way and let free trade develop, things would improve and costs would go down; you don't fight with people you trade with.
If it's the latter, the price system (which is achievable only in a free market without gov't mucking things up) tells us about the scarcity of resources. Things get cheaper if they're more abundant; and if things get more scarce they'll become expensive, spurring entrepreneurs to more production into alternative cheaper sources to attract customers.
My point re: personal oil use is that some people use less oil that others. These government policies necessarily help people and harm others. They choose the winners and losers. The winners here, as "abolish subsidies" pointed out are the corn farmers.
Look how the propaganda machine is running on our tax dollars, again. 'We're using too many resources so we have to sacrifice and cut back.' The truth that the media refuses to divulge by the numbers is that there should be enough food and arable land in this country to stuff over 7 billion people if the majority of it were handled practically and sensibly. There is enough oil, coal, and other fossil fuels to keep the country going as it is for over one hundred years. We don't require governmental and foreign dependence, but the government and corporations invent false scarcity (i.e. oil) and insecurity (i.e. global warming) to make us act like we do, and then they charge us more for their 'solutions' (i.e. corn-based ethanol fuel) and hypocritically limit the accessibility of alternatives (i.e. natural gas, hydrogen, electric) and increase the princes of what they make us use (i.e. ethanol,food,and gasoline are more expensive) as though we the people have been bad (i.e. man-made/government-made pollutants) and they are doing us and the rest of the planet a favor. Worst of all is that such directives are called freedom and innovation. People need to understand that they could be so much better off if they took inexpensive initiatives including growing real food in green houses and investing in electric cars. Always when a society becomes dependent on trusted powers for resources is when those powers can control how much food people eat or when people may use fuel. Think about it this way. You probably trust your parents, but you don't get all your food from them in your own house or take their suggestions on how you should use power in your own house. I'm happy that some Princetonians are discerning enough to recognize the EPA's fraud.
Government = coercion