See an earlier article on other ethanol problems
here. Today's Washington Post published an article about a report I heard last night on NPR,
Studies Say Clearing Land for Biofuels Will Aid Warming. Ethanol poses more of an environmental problem than fossil fuel.
The independent analyses, which will be published today in the journal Science, could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of ethanol-based fuels. President Bush and many members of Congress have touted expanding biofuel use as an integral element of the nation's battle against climate change, but these studies suggest that this strategy will damage the planet rather than help protect it.
The Indianapolis Business Journal
reports on a Purdue professor claiming that increased corn production will cause environmental problems here and now in Indiana:
A Purdue University agricultural economist is worried that the push to raise more corn to feed the expanding number of ethanol plants will harm soil and water quality.
Otto Doering said during a recent conference that farmers lured by higher corn prices will feel compelled to bring highly erodible and environmentally sensitive land out of the federal Conservation Reserve Program and put it into production, according to The Star Press of Muncie.
If growers don't increase the amount of land in corn production, they'll have to produce more corn from the same amount of acreage, Doering said. That means they would have to use much more nitrogen fertilizer.
Excess nitrogen washes off the land and is carried by the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, where it causes an oxygen-starved "dead zone."
With these problems, how much longer before corn ethanol becomes a bubble that gets burst? How much damage will that do to Indiana's farmers? To our food prices? To Mitch Daniels' agricultural policy?
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