Beer and biofuel Oil pollutes, but burning food for fuel is worse
An Op/Ed
By Douglas Schmidt
Although the search for alternative fuels began with the best of intentions, ethanol may do more harm than good. The increasing demand for ethanol is creating a host of problems.
Analysts are projecting that the production of corn-based ethanol will double within a decade. As a result, Americans may see pricier beer, higher food prices and, eventually, environmental devastation.
In the near future, a night out at the bar could be dramatically more expensive. Massive ethanol subsidies are leading many farmers to abandon other, less profitable crops and switch to corn. As a result, the supply of barley has shrunk considerably. Breweries are paying more than double for the crop, a key ingredient of beer, and passing that cost along to consumers.
Poor hops harvests and higher shipping costs also share the blame for the price hike. In some areas, the price of six packs has risen by $1.50 or more. Small brewers have been hit the hardest, with the price of craft beers increasing by 12 percent in the past year.
Diverting the supply of corn away from food will likely lead to higher prices at the grocery store.
According to an article in The Economist, food had been getting cheaper for over thirty years, but that trend came to an abrupt end in 2005. Since then, world food prices have jumped to their highest levels in over 150 years, even adjusting for inflation.
In 2007, the world price of corn hit an all time record. Data from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization shows that world grain prices have increased by 80 percent in the last year alone.
A big cause of the increasing food prices is burning crops for fuel. Americans burned a third of last year’s corn harvest as biofuel. A single SUV tank’s worth of ethanol is made with enough corn to feed a person for a year.
The increasing price of food is having the greatest impact on disadvantaged countries, where starving workers are resorting to violence. Recent weeks have seen riots in Haiti, where food prices have risen by more than 50 percent in the last year, and in Egypt, where protestors burned buildings and attacked police.
Some scientists are now saying that biofuel also has a negative impact on the environment. Throughout the world, massive amounts of land are being cleared to grow crops for biofuel. Huge swaths of Amazon rain forest have already been destroyed. A recent study by the journal Science stated that clearing land to grow biofuel releases 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuel it replaces.
Energy independence and helping the environment are obvious goods, but the high cost of biofuel may be too much to pay.
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