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Reactions to Science magazine: the good, the bad, and the ugly, from the Natural Resources Defence Council, Wall Street Journal, and others

February 13, 2008

Nathanael Green, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, offered the most thoughtful analysis to date of two articles that appeared in Science magazine.The articles have received coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR and most other major media for their startling revision of greenhouse gas emission calculations for biofuels.

More on the Science magazine controversy:

Biofuels emissions authors say biofuels OK if made from waste, perennials, or abandoned land

93 percent increase in greenhouse gases? Renewable Fuel Association says fossil fuels created the “carbon debt we can never repay”

Nature Conservancy study says converting land for biofuels increases net carbon usage

“Do yesterday’s Science articles mean that all biofuels are bad and that the recently passed RFS is going to harm the climate? The short answer is no and no,” Green writes, adding that “The dynamics the authors have identified are undeniable–if you clear land to grow crop for biofuels you have to account for the emissions from that clearing and if you induce clearing by driving up crop and land prices, you also have to take responsibility for those emissions.

“For laying out these dynamics and giving us a sense of the scale,” Greene continues, “we all owe them a debt of gratitude, particularly Searchinger and his team because the emissions from indirect land are hard for many to understand.”

However, he added, “Fortunately, we knew about these dynamics before yesterday, and we’ve won a preemptive victory in getting the dynamics written into the legislation in the form of the land-use safeguards and minimum lifecycle GHG standards.”

“So I would caution folks from assuming that either article means that no crop-based biofuels will be able to comply with the RFS or that their analyses are definitive.”

Meanwhile, NuWire, the New York Sun, CBS News, and the Kansas City Star threw gasoline (or, ahem, ethanol) on the fire with a variety of polemics, riffing off the Science articles. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, which has been ripping ethanol for years, could hardly restrain its glee. A more thoughtful piece from biofuels writer Mike O’Hare gives food for thought on the theme of “a really bad day for biofuels”.

Defense of the industry is offered by Brooke Coleman, of the New Fuels Alliance, who points out that the Searchinger study uses a baseline of 30 billion gallons of ethanol production per year for emissions calculations. The industry produced 7.5 billion gallons in 2007.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg chimes in with a prediction at the United Nations that the US Energy Independence and Security Act will prompt widespread global starvation. Previous predictions of mass starvation from biofuels expansion had been limited to personalities such as Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, among others. Mayor Bloomberg is the first of this august group to predict global starvation specifically as an outcome of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

Late last year, Mayor Bloomberg gave a major address to the United States Conference of Mayors, in which he called for an end to corn ethanol subsidies and the import tariff on Brazilian ethanol.

“Consumers pay more for food, and producing corn-based ethanol results in much more carbon dioxide than producing sugar-based ethanol” the Mayor said. “But are we subsidizing sugar-based ethanol? No! We’re putting a 50-cent tariff on it. Ending that tariff makes all the sense in the world, but for the politics. Everyone knows that politically driven policies are costing taxpayers billions while providing only marginal carbon reductions — but we need leaders who will do something about it!”

Observers were subsequently surprised when the Mayor’s television network, Bloomberg TV, debuted its “Deadly Brew: the Human Toll of Ethanol” documentary, attacking the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry. The documentary investigated reports of 82,000 injuries and 300 deaths that the network said were the product of the low-cost Brazilian sugarcane ethanol operations.

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    Written by Jim Lane · Filed Under Consumers & Fleets, Policy, Producer News 

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