The Ethanol Scam: One of America’s Biggest Political Boondoggles : Rolling Stone

A great piece of journalism detailing why ethanol is NOT the answer to our energy woes.

Nor is all ethanol created equal. In Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1 — that is, when you add up the fossil fuels used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and refine sugar cane into ethanol, the energy output is eight times higher than the energy inputs. That’s a better deal than gasoline, which has an energy balance of 5-to-1. In contrast, the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 – making it practically worthless as an energy source. “Corn ethanol is essentially a way of recycling natural gas,” says Robert Rapier, an oil-industry engineer who runs the R-Squared Energy Blog.

This is a funny excerpt and metaphor for the problem:

“It’s like trying to solve a traffic problem by mandating hovercraft,” says Dave Juday, an independent commodities consultant. “Except we don’t have hovercraft.”

and a sad but very true endcap:

In the end, the ethanol boom is another manifestation of America’s blind faith that technology will solve all our problems. Thirty years ago, nuclear power was the answer. Then it was hydrogen. Biofuels may work out better, especially if mandates are coupled with tough caps on greenhouse-gas emissions. Still, biofuels are, at best, a huge gamble. They may help cushion the fall when cheap oil vanishes, but if we rely on ethanol to save the day, we could soon find ourselves forced to make a choice between feeding our SUVs and feeding children in the Third World. And we all know how that decision will go.

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In India, One Cheap Car Could Go a Long Way – washingtonpost.com

“Can you imagine if even half of the 1.1 billion Indians owned a car?” said Mahesh Mehta, an environmental lawyer in New Delhi. “We should not be following the Western model of car ownership. I think this will be disastrous in India.”

Don’t do it!

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As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes

China has problems. And when the President comes up with a novel solution – to include pollution as a negative influencer on GDP – it gets locked in an ivory tower:

President Hu Jintao’s most ambitious attempt to change the culture of fast-growth collapsed this year. The project, known as “Green G.D.P.,” was an effort to create an environmental yardstick for evaluating the performance of every official in China. It recalculated gross domestic product, or G.D.P., to reflect the cost of pollution.

But the early results were so sobering — in some provinces the pollution-adjusted growth rates were reduced almost to zero — that the project was banished to China’s ivory tower this spring and stripped of official influence.

The environment attacks!:

The toll this pollution has taken on human health remains a delicate topic in China. The leadership has banned publication of data on the subject for fear of inciting social unrest, said scholars involved in the research. But the results of some research provide alarming evidence that the environment has become one of the biggest causes of death.

How Brave New World-ian of them:

China’s environmental agency insisted that the health statistics be removed from the published version of the report, citing the possible impact on “social stability,” World Bank officials said.

And this is never good news:

Since Hu Jintao became the Communist Party chief in 2002 and Wen Jiabao became prime minister the next spring, China’s leadership has struck consistent themes. The economy must grow at a more sustainable, less bubbly pace. Environmental abuse has reached intolerable levels. Officials who ignore these principles will be called to account.

Five years later, it seems clear that these senior leaders are either too timid to enforce their orders, or the fast-growth political culture they preside over is too entrenched to heed them.

It seems that China’s capitalists are getting bigger than their politicos, just like it happened here!

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Convincing new evidence for the central role of environmental protest

Three interesting findings that should guide future action:

1. Protest is significantly more important than public opinion or institutional advocacy in influencing federal environmental law. Agnone found that each protest event increases the likelihood of pro-environmental legislation being passed by 1.2 percent, and moderate protest increases the annual rate of adoption by an astonishing 9.5 percent.
2. Public opinion on its own influences federal action (though less than protest), but is vastly strengthened by protest, which “amplifies” public support and, in Agnone’s words, “raises the salience of public opinion for legislators.” Protest and public opinion are synergistic, with a joint impact on federal policy far more dramatic than either factor alone.
3. Institutional advocacy has limited impact on federal environmental policy.

Which makes this cost-benefit analysis feel like a kick to the gut:

Applying Agnone’s findings, Step It Up — the work of a handful of Middlebury College students and Bill McKibben, operating with a modest $100,000 budget — will have single-handedly improved odds of federal action by 1.2 percent to 10 percent (if the effort sparks more protest). The sprawling public communications and advocacy operations of U.S. environmental organizations and foundations, on the other hand, at a cost of more than $150 million/year*, will not measurably influence U.S. policy.

And here is why, rationally, taking it to the streets is the right thing to do:

It is a mistake to view advocacy and protest as a dichotomy between rational and emotional communications, as they are often perceived — and herein lays the key to understanding the power of protest.

For environmentalists and the small but growing percentage of Americans who have come to accept that the world as we know it is crashing down around us and who know that nothing serious is being done about it, the most rational response is to take to the streets. To continue our present strategy of downplaying climate change risk and making joint alliance with the chief architects of the massive ramp-up in global fossil fuel use is irrational.

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Jobs Abroad Support ‘Model’ State in India | NextBillion.net – Development Through Enterprise

Kerala’s low-level economy works, though it may be dependent on the larger global capitalist structure by way of the migrant workers that comprise 1/6th of its population and work force. They have long longevity and high literacy rates, however, and the matriarchal state lends itself to economics making pnderings such as the one below:

“The fact that quality of life can be improved through government intervention, even in societies that are very poor — I think that’s important,” said Prabhat Patnaik, the vice chairman of the state planning board. Kerala’s experience, he said, shows “the quality of life is not just related to the growth rate” of the economy.

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Warming Is Seen as Wiping Out Most Polar Bears – CommonDreams.org

poor polar bears.  losing 2/3 of a population so quickly should seem immoral, but actions has yet to be taken on this and, given our hesitation to take ANY action, I’m not certain that their fate is as good as this article portends…

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In India, a $2,500 Pace Car – New York Times

The world need less cars, not more.  And in India, where roads are shared by cows, camels, elephants, auto-rickshaws, trucks, bikes, and cars, this could be very dangerous.  Also, it will slow down what is already often stand-stil traffic.

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Most ready for ‘green sacrifices’

This poll clearly shows that people are much more ready to endure their share of the burden than most politicians grant.

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Monkeys in the Parks, Monkeys in the Palace – New York Times

Monkeys are taking over New Delhi! Recently, the Deputy Mayor died after falling off a balcony while trying to fend them off.

Some interesting excerpts:

Official embarrassment intensified when a newspaper said that the only monkey catcher employed by the city, Nand Lal, who had two decades of experience, had resigned and returned to his village, fed up with being harassed by animal rights advocates.

The lawyer charged by the High Court with ensuring the monkeys’ removal said recently that things were as bad as ever, even in some leading hospitals. “They attack patients who are being rolled inside the hospital, pull out IV tubes and scamper off to drink the fluids,” the lawyer, Meera Bhatia, told Indian journalists.

Part of the difficulty lies in people’s ambivalence toward the animals, she added. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, followers of the Hindu monkey god, Hanuman, risk being fined to feed the monkeys.

“We have a serious problem because of our religious ways,” Ms. Mehra said. “People feed them liberally. But they do attack. In the past three years, there have been 2,000 cases of monkey bite in Delhi.”

“We are continuing the deforestation so fast that all kinds of wildlife are finding themselves suddenly homeless,” said Ranjit Talwar, a conservationist. “That’s why we are seeing more attacks by tigers, leopards, monkeys and elephants.”

And finally…

Sonya Ghosh, an animal rights campaigner advising the government on monkey removal, said residents should try to live in harmony with the monkeys.

“The only way is to ignore them,” she said. “Never look a monkey in the eye, never raise your eyebrows at one: it’s interpreted as a challenge.” But she conceded that for many people, the abundance of monkeys was an unwelcome reminder that New Delhi was still far from its goal of transforming itself into a world-class city.

“People in the new residential areas, these newly rich, have different sensibilities,” she said. “They want to pretend that they are living in New York.”

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Michael Kinsley – Who Needs Experience? – washingtonpost.com

Well-considered article on the value of experience in a presidential bid.

I was specifically struck by these lines:

“…the specter of dynasty hangs unattractively over her presidential ambitions. In an odd way, the deep unpopularity of George W. Bush has hurt Hillary Clinton, as people think: “Enough with relatives already.”

Couldn’t agree more.

As for experience of the more conventional sort, almost every presidential campaign features two basic arguments. Senators, or former senators, accuse governors or former governors of not having enough foreign policy experience. And governors or former governors (or this year, possibly, a former mayor) accuse senators or former senators of never having run anything larger than a Senate office.

I’ve argued exactly this before.

My candidate, at least at the moment, is Obama. When I hear him discussing issues, I hear intelligence and reflection and almost a joy in thinking it through. (Okay, not all issues. He obviously gets no joy over driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.) That willingness, even eagerness, to figure things out seems to me more valuable than any amount of experience in allowing issues to wash over you as they do our incumbent president.

My thoughts exactly.

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