In Which I Agree With Big Oil and the Tea Party

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/blogumentary/471673120/">Chukumentary</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Amid much fanfare in 2007, Bush signed an energy law that mandated a large and annually increasing amount of corn-based ethanol be mixed into the nation’s car fuel supply. Six months or so later, a senator/presidential candidate named Barack Obama could be found jetting about on ethanol giant Archer Daniels Midland’s corporate airplane and appearing at the openings of new ethanol plants. And his administration has been promoting and defending the stuff ever since.

In their boosterism for corn ethanol, Obama and his predecessor were heeding a bi-partisan consensus that has propped up the industry since the 1970s. But now it’s wearing thin. In a document leaked in October, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency revealed it was considering scaling back the amount of ethanol required to be mixed into the gasoline supply in 2014—which, until very recently, would have been an unthinkable affront to King Corn. And then, on Friday, the EPA formally proposed the cutback, and will now take public comment on it, “which is certain to be voluminous,” The New York Times dryly noted.

The reason for Obama’s apostasy on ethanol, as this Reuters piece explains, has to do with the nature of car engines. They’re designed to burn petroleum-based gas, and older models tend to get gummed up when the gasoline mix surpasses 10 percent ethanol, known as the “blend wall.” The mandates in George W. Bush’s 2007 energy law were based on the assumption that US gasoline consumption would rise indefinitely—meaning that you could mix ever-higher amounts of ethanol into the fuel supply with breaching the blend wall for years. But since the Great Recession and concurrent rise in mileage standards in new cars, US gasoline consumption has been shrinking, and the blend wall is upon is.

The lead-up to the EPA’s decision has inspired a frenzy of lobbying, The Wall Street Journal and Politico report. Here’s Politico on the battle lines:

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.

This is obviously an unsavory fight: King Corn vs. Big Oil and the tea party. But as this sprawling recent Associated Press exposé shows, the environmental case for corn-based ethanol is indeed bankrupt—as I (and many others) have been arguing for years. It turns out, as the AP report shows, that diverting crops into the fuel supply encourages the worst, most soil-abusing practices of US agriculture: monocropping, massive applications of agrichemicals (including dead zone-causing fertilizers), and the conversion of environmentally fragile land into intensive farming. Who wins from the government-mandated ethanol rush? Just as the firms that supply mining tools tend tend to benefit most from gold rushes, the companies that supply farmers agrichemicals are the main beneficiaries of a rigged-up ethanol boom.

When he enshrined the current ethanol boom into policy in 2007, President Bush declared it a “major step” toward “confronting global climate change.” That was a ludicrous statement then—and six years of woefully inadequate federal action on climate change have made it downright obscene. I’m with Big Oil and the tea party on this one.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate