Word: ethanol
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...exert this power. As food prices worldwide spike, most of the world’s corn and soy crops are fed to animals—with grain-fed beef requiring 10 times more grain to produce the same amount of calories as direct grain consumption. This, coupled with absurd ethanol subsidies, incentivizes monoculture production of corn across the Midwest, which in turn erodes soil and creates nitrogen run-off into the Gulf of Mexico...
...Debate on Clean Energy While Michael Grunwald's article on the emerging ethanol industry was both chilling and truthful, it's damaging to demonize the global effort to develop clean fuels as "myth," "scam" and "hype" [April 7]. It is no myth that thousands of scientific teams are working feverishly to create biofuels such as ethanol, biodiesel and biobutanol from nonfood plants grown on land unsuitable for food production. We could not have landed on the moon without first launching at Kitty Hawk. We are getting better at this every day. Mark Beyer, Detroit...
...culprit in global warming are not supported by scientific facts or reliable statistics. Second, the growth rate of Brazilian emissions has been on the decline primarily because of decreasing rates of Amazon rain-forest deforestation, which is the main source of carbon emissions in Brazil, and increasing use of ethanol fuel. Furthermore, from 1970 to 2005 the use of ethanol in our energy mix has averted the emission of 644 million tons of CO2, the equivalent of Canada's annual emissions. When compared with the unsustainable energy patterns used in major developed countries, the Brazilian experience can be considered...
...trends. The first is the chronically low productivity of farmers in the poorest countries, caused by their inability to pay for seeds, fertilizers and irrigation. The second is the misguided policy in the U.S. and Europe of subsidizing the diversion of food crops to produce biofuels like corn-based ethanol. The third is climate change; take the recent droughts in Australia and Europe, which cut the global production of grain in 2005 and '06. The fourth is the growing global demand for food and feed grains brought on by swelling populations and incomes. In short, rising demand...
Second, the U.S. and Europe should abandon their policies of subsidizing the conversion of food into biofuels. The U.S. government gives farmers a taxpayer-financed subsidy of 51˘ per gal. of ethanol to divert corn from the food and feed-grain supply. There may be a case for biofuels produced on lands that do not produce foods--tree crops (like palm oil), grasses and wood products--but there's no case for doling out subsidies to put the world's dinner into the gas tank...