By Paul Chesser 

With food and gas prices skyrocketing, several state climate commissions are ignoring the backlash against the suddenly antiquated policy of plant-enhanced petrol, as they hope to stop the alleged future global warming catastrophe.

Why? Because before they even get started, panelists and their hired management team (in most cases), the Center for Climate Strategies, forbid any discussion of global warming science outside the prevailing mainstream media take of the last 10 to 15 years — that is, that carbon dioxide emissions must be curbed dramatically to stop the trend. Don’t you understand that the “science is settled”?

That premise extends also to CCS’s standard menu of “solutions” to climate change, but now even the MSM has turned against biofuels. That’s ignored in roughly two dozen states, where in most cases governors (both Republican and Democrat) have appointed climate commission members, and push proposals that will increase costs of carbon-based sources (oil, coal) of energy while subsidizing inefficient resources like wind, solar, and crop combustion.

Read the rest of this piece at The American Spectator.

By Linda C. Runbeck

A recent Pioneer Press column by Sen. Amy Klobuchar called for a federal energy policy with multiple strategies, or in her words, ‘silver buckshot,’ to bring gas prices under control and increase our energy reserves.

A good approach, but she fails to include the simplest and most easily accomplished ways to reach that goal — including some that she, as a U.S. senator, could put on the table tomorrow.

For example, Klobuchar said President Bush should “use his bargaining power” with OPEC countries to get them to increase their oil production, yet she neglects discussion of our own domestic sources.

Domestic energy production will stabilize energy prices and create independence from foreign oil. Shouldn’t our leaders be talking about such proven sources as nuclear power, hydropower and clean coal and putting on the table such winners as more refineries and domestic drilling?

Of course they should, yet Congress continues to vote to put vast sources of energy off-limits. Some regions, like the Outer Continental Shelf and Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, are known to contain huge reserves of oil and natural gas.

These proven solutions are not without their down-sides and environmental costs — and Congress must intensify the demand for technological answers — but we are a producer nation that is totally dependent on abundant and reliable energy. Our domestic supplies of coal, oil and natural gas offer the most immediate hope for a nation whose energy needs are increasing, not decreasing.

High gasoline prices are a worldwide problem of supply and demand spiked by increasing demand from China and India and near-capacity production. When Klobuchar puts the blame on traders and the futures market and proposes new regulations, she risks hurting U.S. investors and distorting the very market that operates to warn us of pending limited supplies and increased worldwide demand.

Alternatives to fossil fuel are essential, but they must pollute less and be cost effective and efficient to produce. Unfortunately, Klobuchar’s alternatives score poorly. The ethanol mandate she claimed victory for in late 2007 requires a 700 percent increase in ethanol production by 2022, but will come at a huge cost of increased food prices and reduced supply.

Despite assurances from Klobuchar that cellulosic ethanol is just around the corner, a February 2008 study from Iowa State University concludes it’s a risky bet that it can supply the billions of gallons Congress mandated by 2022, and it’s even more expensive to subsidize than corn-based ethanol.

Klobuchar is also poised to penalize oil and natural gas producers with increased drilling fees on public lands while Congress leans toward increased taxes and elimination of tax deductions. Such responses will translate directly into higher prices at the pump and slow the development of domestic energy supplies. In fact, the extremely low oil prices of the 1990s mothballed many small domestic producers; now, they should be encouraged to get their production facilities up and running again.

Higher fees and taxes on energy producers will further penalize the consumer and the legions of small investors and retirees whose investments in mutual funds or diversified retirement plans stand to lose.

Klobuchar is right: The nation needs a “smart, strong long-term energy strategy.” While conservation and alternative fuels must be included, alone they do not meet current or future needs. Until we find the “bridge” to more environmentally friendly energy alternatives, we must depend on proven sources of abundant and cost-effective energy to supply our food and fuel our homes, jobs, businesses and transportation.

Congress should focus on encouraging domestic energy production and making sure our U.S. energy producers are working overtime to increase our energy reserves. What we don’t need are counterproductive efforts by Congress that disadvantage U.S. companies working hard to produce the proven conventional energy resources that keep us moving. Whether it’s a silver bullet or silver buckshot, we have to make sure we’re aiming at the right target.

Linda Runbeck is a former Minnesota state senator and is president of the American Property Coalition, based in St. Paul.

By Peter Robison, Alan Ohnsman and Alan Bjerga

The U.S. Postal Service purchased more than 30,000 ethanol-capable trucks and minivans from 1999 to 2005, making it the biggest American buyer of alternative-fuel vehicles. Gasoline consumption jumped by more than 1.5 million gallons as a result.

The trucks, derived from Ford Motor Co.’s Explorer sport- utility vehicle, had bigger engines than Jeeps from the former Chrysler Corp. they replaced. A Postal Service study found the new vehicles got as much as 29 percent fewer miles to the gallon. Mail carriers used the corn-based fuel in just 1,000 of them because there weren’t enough places to buy it.

“You’re getting fewer miles per gallon, and it’s costing us more,” Walt O’Tormey, the Postal Service’s Washington-based vice president of engineering, said in an interview. The agency may buy electric vehicles instead, he said.

The experience shows how the U.S. push for crop-based fuels, already contributing to the highest rate of food inflation in 17 years, may not be achieving its goal of reducing gasoline consumption. Lawmakers are seeking caps on the use of biofuels after last year’s 40 percent jump in world food prices, calling the U.S. policy flawed.

“Using food for fuel has created some unintended consequences: food shortages, the high price of livestock feed,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. “I think it’s leading a lot of people to wonder whether our corn-based ethanol goals need to be adjusted.”

Read the rest of this story at Bloomberg News.

By David Mercer 

Not long ago, the fledgling ethanol industry was the darling of investors, farmers, the federal government and a lot of Americans who liked the idea of turning corn into fuel.

But suddenly, it doesn’t have nearly as many friends.

Rising worldwide food prices and shortages have spurred calls in Congress to roll back the federal requirement that increases the amount of ethanol and other biofuels blended with the nation’s gasoline supply. Critics say so much corn is being used for ethanol that there’s less available for people and animals to eat, raising prices of everything from tortillas to meat.

What’s more, investors who bought into the industry in good times aren’t seeing the returns they’d hoped for as once-record profits began to fall.

“Consumers are starting to get restless and Washington is starting to listen,” said Morningstar analyst Ann Gilpin, who follows Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland, the country’s second-largest ethanol producer.

The ethanol market would be severely limited if Congress rolled back the federal mandate that calls annual increases in the amount of biofuels added to the fuel supply — 9 billion gallons by the end of this year, increasing to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

That would most hurt companies that rely exclusively or primarily on ethanol, which include a mix of small, often locally owned distillers — already under pressure since ethanol prices fell and corn prices rose sharply — as well as larger publicly traded firms like VeraSun Energy Corp., the country’s top ethanol producer.

“If you sell one product and the only reason there’s a market for it is because the government makes a law requiring consumption — if that law goes away, obviously you’re in trouble,” Gilpin said.

The odds of Congress changing that mandate this year are slim because the 10 states — mostly in the Midwest — that produce over 80 percent of all American ethanol have between them almost half of the 270 electoral votes needed to win a presidential election, said analyst Kevin Book of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co.

After the election, though, sentiment could change.

Read the rest of this story at Business Week.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

ROME — In the past year, as the diversion of food crops like corn and palm to make biofuels has helped to drive up food prices, investors and politicians have begun promoting newer, so-called second-generation biofuels as the next wave of green energy. These, made from non-food crops like reeds and wild grasses, would offer fuel without the risk of taking food off the table, they said.

But now, biologists and botanists are warning that they, too, may bring serious unintended consequences. Most of these newer crops are what scientists label invasive species — that is, weeds — that have an extraordinarily high potential to escape biofuel plantations, overrun adjacent farms and natural land, and create economic and ecological havoc in the process, they now say.

At a United Nations meeting in Bonn, Germany, on Tuesday, scientists from the Global Invasive Species Program, the Nature Conservancy and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as well as other groups, presented a paper with a warning about invasive species.

“Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive alien species,” the paper says, adding that these crops should be studied more thoroughly before being cultivated in new areas.

Controlling the spread of such plants could prove difficult, the experts said, producing “greater financial losses than gains.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature encapsulated the message like this: “Don’t let invasive biofuel crops attack your country.”

To reach their conclusions, the scientists compared the list of the most popular second-generation biofuels with the list of invasive species and found an alarming degree of overlap. They said little evaluation of risk had occurred before planting.

“With biofuels, there’s always a hurry,” said Geoffrey Howard, an invasive species expert with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. “Plantations are started by investors, often from the U.S. or Europe, so they are eager to generate biofuels within a couple of years and also, as you might guess, they don’t want a negative assessment.”

Read the rest of this story at New York Times.

In early 2007, two University of Minnesota economists forecast that biofuels would sharply increase food prices by 2020, leading to a steep rise in the number of empty bellies in the world.

How wrong they were. Soaring rates of hunger didn’t take a generation. It took a year.

The president of the World Bank recently estimated that 100 million more people around the world have slipped into hunger in the past year, in the wake of soaring oil and food prices.

“The kinds of price increases that we were using out to 2020 already have occurred and been exceeded,” said Benjamin Senauer, one of the authors of an article in Foreign Affairs magazine that raised dire warnings brushed aside by the biofuels industry.

Read the rest of the story at the Star Tribune

An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they’re serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming.

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.

Read the full story at Time Magazine

The Wall Street Journal has reported the results of two independent studies that suggest the widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded Thursday.  The study challenges the rush to biofuels as a response to global warming.

Read the rest of the story at the Wall Street Journal

Biofuels are generally an expensive and ineffective way to cut greenhouse gas emissions when compared to other policies and are likely to cause increasing food prices and insecurity, concluded a UK government report yesterday. It also criticized the British and EU governments for pursuing targets for increased use of biofuels without putting in place ‘robust’ measures to prevent environmental damage.

The report comes as concern about the impact of biofuels on the environment and supply of staple food crops grows. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has repeatedly warned that biofuel production is partly responsible for rising food prices in recent months, threatening food security in developing countries in particular.

But EU policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions says that 10 per cent of transport fuel should come from biofuels by 2020. Britain has a separate target of 5 per cent biofuels in petrol and diesel by 2010 through its Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), which is set to enter into force in April.

Read the rest of the story at Food Production Daily