The Biofuel Chimera

What do biofuels have to do with a doubling of the price of corn tortillas in Mexico in late 2006 ?

The following piece appeared in the May/June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs (published by the Council on Foreign Relations) which debunks the "green" alternative to fossil fuels (same piece appeared in NYT as well)

How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor
C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer

Some interesting points from the article:

"In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops."

"The ethanol industry has also become a theater of protectionism in U.S. trade policy. Unlike oil imports, which come into the country duty-free, most ethanol currently imported into the United States carries a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff, partly because cheaper ethanol from countries such as Brazil threatens U.S. producers" -- so much for "free trade"

"The biofuel industry has long been dominated not by market forces but by politics and the interests of a few large companies," in large part Archer Daniels Midland, the major ethanol producer

"The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year"

"The number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by over 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods. That means that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025 -- 600 million more than previously predicted."

"Should corn and soybeans be used as fuel crops at all? Soybeans and especially corn are row crops that contribute to soil erosion and water pollution and require large amounts of fertilizer, pesticides, and fuel to grow, harvest, and dry. They are the major cause of nitrogen runoff -- the harmful leakage of nitrogen from fields when it rains -- of the type that has created the so-called dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an ocean area the size of New Jersey that has so little oxygen it can barely support life"

"Ethanol and biodiesel are often viewed as environmentally friendly because they are plant-based rather than petroleum-based. In fact, even if the entire corn crop in the United States were used to make ethanol, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of current U.S. gasoline use. Thinking of ethanol as a green alternative to fossil fuels reinforces the chimera of energy independence and of decoupling the interests of the United States from an increasingly troubled Middle East."

Pipe # 111241

The Polaris Institute (Canada) released in 2005 an important publication titled: "In the Bottle, An Exposé of the Bottled Water Industry". "In the Bottle" is being used as a study and action guide by environmental and political groups in Canada.

One of the many interesting facts in this report is about Alaska Premium Glacier (now defunct) bottled water. According to the above report, the "glacier" water "is drawn from the municipal water system in Juneau, Alaska, specifically, pipe # 111241, which is not a glacier". Apparently the label said "Alaska Premium Glacier Drinking Water: Pure Glacier Water From the Last Unpolluted Frontier, Bacteria Free".

Bottled Water is just another example of how lack of regulation (read "private or free enterprise") can cause environmental damage, encourage use of misleading or outright false advertising and huge undeserved profits for private companies (and their lobbyists) who fight against regulation where it is needed the most. Private enterprise is not a guarantee of consumer protection, environmental protection or even efficiency. The only efficiency at play is at making huge profits by duping the public. It is inconceivable that hordes of people pay money for a basic human necessity such as water in spite of the fact that unfiltered tap water is in a lot of cases simply safer that bottled water. The Bottle Water lunacy started during the Reagan administration (with an endless repetition of the deregulation mantra). Bottle Water is a great example of a highly sophisticated propaganda apparatus that is able to convince millions of people to buy into the sham and transforming water into a fashion statement.

As another example, the Bolivian government imposed martial law (and repression that goes along with it) when the public protested the privatization (by usual suspect Bechtel) of the water supply which resulted in a huge increase in the price of water. Happily, the government finally relented to the civil disobedience and Bechtel had to flee.

A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) mentions that "Millions of us are willing to pay 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than we do for tap water".

The Polaris Institute report is a great step in educating the public and community groups in this critical matter.

A great summary of all the issues can be read in this article by Larry Lack which talks in some more detail about the Polaris report.

The Bottled Water Madness

The Oil Factor

Just finished watching the documentary The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror (by Free-Will Productions - Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy), so figured I'd write a review with my thoughts before they vanished into some inaccessible recess.

The first thing you should watch on the DVD is not the movie but the special features, namely a Pentagon 'informational' video on depleted uranium use. The video will leave you with absolutely no doubt that lunatics are in charge.

The documentary is a great summary of most of the critical events that have occurred since 9-11. While I was for most part familiar each individual incident described in the documentary, a very coherent picture seemed to emerge from all the individual bits and pieces.

1. Iraq and Afghanistan have been subjected to the an incredibly vicious brand of violence, aggression, assault, indifference and arrogance whose full impact can never possibly be understood by anyone looking in from the outside.
2. An armed struggle against the US occupiers is the only viable option for most Iraqis
3. Majority of the world population detests the US
4. Except to see continuing violence across the globe indefinitely (mainly over control of oil rich locations)
5. Fighting "terrorism" is clearly not the objective. The real objective is to maintain global hegemony and consequently total energy security. Any resistance to this brutal juggernaut will be construed as terrorism.
6. Things are going to get way worse before they get better (just kidding about the better part)

The documentary follows somewhat of a non-linear timeline first going into Iraq and then tackling Afghanistan later and lightly touching on Iran.

PNAC

Of course, any documentary regarding the Middle East is almost certainly going to mention PNAC (Project for the New American Century) and we have an interview with PNAC spokesperson, Gary Schmitt. Schmitt makes the following comments:

1) We (i.e. you and me) are foolish to think that money is better spent on American domestic programs than in Iraq (yes, he definitely called that foolish, claiming the Medicare & education get enough already). (he also equates American citizens with pennies and Iraqi oil with pounds)
2) Schmitt says that there was no push for oil when the US invaded Iraq and that the US has enough oil. This is just semantic sleight of hand. While he's correct that the US has enough oil currently (domestic and imported supplies) and doesn't necessarily need Iraqi oil as of this minute, what he conveniently avoids saying is that the US invasion of Iraq is initially for "control", not direct, immediate profits from oil. The goal of the US in Iraq is to prevent any other foreign country from establishing a presence there in direct opposition to US dominance.
3) Without a hint of irony, he talks about how the war on terror involves states who produce/intend to use WMD (hmmm... lets see which country comes to mind first .... ) and states that harbor terrorists (Florida, School of the Americas .. anyone?)

Iraq Sanctions:

There is brief mention of the sanctions that have been imposed on Iraq since Gulf War I and the constant bombing of Iraq between the first & second Gulf war and the devastating effects it has had on the Iraqi people. Additionally, the reasons why the sanctions were not lifted (until Gulf War II) , was because foreign countries would have secured all the oil contracts from Saddam, and once foreign countries had a presence in Iraq, it would have been difficult for the US to launch an invasion (at least the assumption is that the US doesn't plan on killing Western Europeans)

Other topics covered regarding Iraq include the "constitutional fiction" managed by Paul Bremer, continuing deterioration of infrastructure, privatization of Iraqi resources, war funds, Cheney's Energy Task Force and so on.

Depleted Uranium

Depleted uranium weapons were used in Gulf War I & Kosovo as well. And they were used again in Gulf War II. The difference being that this time, the depleted uranium weapons were targeted against civilian areas. The Pentagon instructional video is pretty clear about the hazards posed by the depleted (U 238) weapons. The fact that these weapons were used simply defies all common sense and humanity.

We also have cameo appearances by Noam Chomsky, David Mulholland (of Jane's Defense Weekly), former Pentagon analyst Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (who jokingly mentions that Turkey is nowadays a problem because they're a democracy), Michael Ruppert, Zbigniew Brzezinski and more.


Back to Afghanistan:

• The only reason US has bases in Afghanistan is not to fight "terrorism" but to prevent other foreign countries from intervening.
• The countryside is littered with cluster bombs & land mines. We then see several Afghanis who have lost their limbs from accidental detonation of land mines and cluster bombs.
• Heroin production is in full swing and controlled by the warlords and the revenue from drug trafficking is used to procure weapons to retain territorial control.

Col Rod Davis, Spokesperson, Coalition Force in Afghanistan keeps repeating the same mindless mantra: "Our mission is to kill, capture and deny sanctuary to anti-coalition forces in Afghanistan. We aggressively seek anti-coalition forces. We're looking for them 24x7 and will stay here till the job is done". Well, I have news for the Col. --- All the anti-coalition forces have all moved elsewhere, so your job is to look for something that doesn't exist. I'm afraid you are going to be there for a very long time. And by the way try not to kill any civilians, I know that's hard.

Finally:

The 2 statements that sum up the conflicting US & Iraqi perspectives are from:

1) Gary Schmitt of the PNAC: "The future security of the US depends on the President's program for transforming the Middle East and Iraq is the first step in doing so."
2) Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim - Iraqi Governing Council : "The responsibility of changing Iraq is on the Iraqi people"


The defense contractors appear to be involved in a bloody, vicious cycle of destroy, rebuild, destroy, rebuild ad nauseum. Clearly, the same corporations that are responsible for manufacturing the weapons to destroy all existing infrastructure then come in after the destruction, salivating like rabid dogs at the prospect of huge no-bid contracts paid for by the American taxpayer.

Some minor quibbles:

1) While the subject of the number of Iraqis dead as a result of the invasion is touched upon, no mention is made of the Iraqi death toll figures from 2 very important reports (Johns Hopkins & Lancet)
2) Ed Asner (narrator) has a drab voice :-) (OK, that's not really a valid criticism)
3) That somehow, Russia was responsible in large part for America's "defeat" in Vietnam (conveniently ignoring the fact that it was an independent nationalist movement in Vietnam that forced the Americans out).

Kudos to Free-Will productions for making a very instructive documentary.