The Ethanol Catastrophe
Biofuels aggravate global warming and cause hunger. Why won’t the U.S. stop subsidizing them?
SYDNEY—Spectators at February’s Daytona 500 in Florida were handed green flags to wave in celebration of the news that the race’s stock cars now use gasoline with 15 percent corn-based ethanol. It was the start of a seasonlong television marketing campaign to sell the merits of biofuel to Americans.
On the surface, the self-proclaimed “greening of NASCAR” is merely a transparent (and, one suspects, ill-fated) exercise in “greenwashing” for the sport. But the partnership between a beloved American pastime and the biofuel lobby also marks the latest attempt to sway public opinion in favor of a truly irresponsible policy.
The United States spends about $6 billion a year on federal support for ethanol production through tax credits, tariffs, and other programs. Thanks to this financial assistance, one-sixth of the world’s corn supply is burned in American cars. That is enough corn to feed 350 million people for an entire year.
Government support of rapid growth in biofuel production has contributed to disarray in food production. Indeed, as a result of official policy in the United States and Europe, including aggressive production targets, biofuel consumed more than 6.5 percent of global grain output and 8 percent of the world’s vegetable oil in 2010, up from 2 percent of grain supplies and virtually no vegetable oil in 2004.
This year, after a particularly bad growing season, we see the results. Global food prices are the highest they have been since the United Nations started tracking them in 1990, pushed up largely by increases in the cost of corn. Despite the strides made recently against malnutrition, millions more people will be undernourished than would have been the case in the absence of official support for biofuels.
We have been here before. In 2007 and 2008, the swift increase in biofuel production caused a food crisis that incited political instability and fueled malnutrition. Developed countries did not learn. Since 2008, ethanol production has increased by 33 percent. (Bjørn Lomborg, Project Syndicate)
