Will you be boycotting Ethanol?

Question

Since ethanol is so environmentally destructive compared to gasoline, will you be boycotting it?

To produce ethanol we must clear grassland or forests, plow the land, divert water to irrigate it, spray it with herbacides and insecticides and process the harvest. Is it worth that much environmental destruction when we can simply drill for oil or mine coal?

Answer 1

Wow. You REALLY need to do your research. Ever hear of switchgrass? VERY environmentally friendly. And 5X more efficient than corn, sugar beets, etc. Don't be so easily fooled.

Answer 2

Hmmm, this is a very interesting question/debate.  However, as apparently I've had my head in the smog (so-to-speak) I don't know enough about the issue.  I would be interested in learning where I can link to find out more about BOTH sides of the issue.  I was under the impression that mining for coal was devastating beyond belief to the environment not to mention the many hazards faced by the people doing the job.  As for drilling for more oil, I thought that we were already about to tap into our emergency reserves as it is.  So what I'm wondering is do we have a choice not to pursue this other option?  I'm not saying what I think should be done either way, only that I need to know more about it.  I don't want to destroy the environment or bring harm to a person or to an animal and I also don't want to deplete what resources we have left.  More information would be helpful.  And by the way, thanks for giving me something important to devote my thought to!  Any information concerning links would be appreciated.

Answer 3

No.

Why the focus on crops?  You can make ethanol from algae.  Also.  Have you flown in a plane?  There is plenty of open land out there with no need for deforestation.  I've flown to Australia, Europe, China and South Africa.  Plenty of land.  Pesticides?  GM crops can be pesticide free and use less water as well.

The fact is fossil fuel is not an unlimited supply.

Answer 4

No, because it's a great alternative fuel.

Answer 5

Well, to those of you that would like to boycott Ethanol....most, if not all fuel stations, are now using a 10% Ethanol blend, which does not have to be posted on the gas pump.  The Michigan government has passed a law that limits the blend to 10% without having to post it on the pump.  The only fuel that does not and cannot have any ethanol additives whatsoever is those pumps that are fueling airplanes and that is because when water enters the tank which has any amount of ethanol in it, the water does not float to the top of the tank, it turns to tiny bubbles and mixes with the fuel (not what you want while in the air).  As much as I hate the idea of using Ethanol additives, we are all using it every time we fill up....

Answer 6

From what little I know....I think any ethanol we use should be produced in our country.  I don't want to be increasingly more responsible for poor countries plowing under for our convenience.  Also, moving any products great distances just wastes fuel. Aren't there US farmers who are paid by the gov't not to grow crops, or certain crops?  Could they grow corn or whatever for ethanol?  (And why is corn, wheat and soy subsidized by the gov't?)  As long as people have enough water for basic use, for farming food, I could buy  verifiable US produced ethanol.   I know it can only be a small part of our transition off of oil--along with conservation and new technology.

Answer 7

I guess I'm a litle confused on what you mean by environmentally destructive...we already have farm land where the corn can be produced, so how do you figure that MORE land will need to be cleared to produce it?

The majority of the farms out there currently use pesticides and herbicides on food that is consumed by people, so what would the big deal be for corn produced for ethonal?

Sometimes, you really need to look at the fights that you pick and decide fit's worth the whole battle or not.

Oil and coal have way more harmful side effects to the earth and people than ethonal does.  Ethonal IS a renewable source of energy, coal and oil are not.

Answer 8

Ethanol is not the answer.

I live in a corn state, and grew up a farm kid. In a local market E85 would be a viable solution, ie buy fuel at the plant. But that is the end of it's viability. I don't believe it should be subsidized, and I don't believe we should be removing food stuffs out of the chain to fill the bill on our transportation costs.

It becomes a major circle problem. You pay more for corn. The cost of producing livestock and other grain products increase as the result of removing the commodity out of the market for transportation fuel production.

That said, the logistics of ethanol is problematic.

Ethanol degrades, it requires trucks to transport from "distilling plants"

Ethanol reduces MPG by about 10-15%, so the amount "saved" in price is not enough to justify the difference.

In my view we do need to do somethings,

1st - Build refineries - Our number one issue is refining capacity - eliminate hurdles to building them cost effectively

2nd - Eliminate the blend changes from summer to winter

3rd - Drill offshore location such as Gulf Coast from FL to TX expanding those areas and mandate it in the nations interest.

4th -- Implement CTL/GTL utilize the 1000-2000 years of available coal and begin diverting a large portion into the conversion from CTL to liquid feedstock for refining.

5th -- Tell the environmentalists to get the h**l out of DC.

6th - Close our borders and protect our country.

Answer 9

I will in fact be boycotting ethanol because of the environmental destruction you mentioned. But, oil and coal will pollute the environment, and we will eventually use up our supply. So ethanol, although proclaimed to be the answer to our problem, is not.

Answer 10

Very few people are aware of how much animal and people feed remains after the production of ethanol....have some corn flakes, for example, which are such a side product.

If coal produces a side product we can ship to places with no food, I say more coal!

Answer 11

Ethanol is a dead end used to divert attention away from real alternatives (such as electric or biodiesel), so yes I will.

Answer 12

Ethanol will never happen.  If we used our entire corn crop to produce ethanor we would only take care of 12% of our energy needs.  That would mean creating more crops.  Which would in turn mean using more fertalizer.  Fertalizer is produced using fossil fuels mainly natural gas.  We would need to use more oil in order to create an alternative for oil.  Not to mention the amound of land and trees we would have to clear to get started.  The push for Ethanol right now is simply the presidential candidates attempt to win the Iowa Primary and become the next president.  No one who has truly studied this believes that ethanol is a viable alternative.

Answer 13

I will gladly use ethanol over oil.  Plants for fuel can be gown in sandy soil - many plants are not for eating.  They stop soil erosion.  They add new nutrients to the soil,  They don't contain sulfur as oil.  They are home produce, not requiring continental shipping or long pipe runs.

Answer 14

Just run our cars on butanol----

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:B...

Answer 15

Good point here is some more information to support you



The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service



Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...

Answer 16

No,I can't say I would boycott it but on the other hand it would contribute to world hunger.And waste our Forrest and would I be willing to do that for driving my car NO !