July 24, 2023
"The US biofuel program is likely killing endangered species and harming the environment in a way that negates its benefits..."
"... but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is largely ignoring those problems, a new federal lawsuit charges.
The suit alleges the EPA failed to consider impacts on endangered species, as is required by law, when it set new rules that will expand biofuel use nationwide during the next three years, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought the litigation. The agency has twice ignored court orders to study the impacts and is likely dodging the requirements because ethanol production 'props up' the corn industry, which has a politically powerful lobby, Hartl added."
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36 comments:
Restore the corn rootworm, the seed corn maggot, the European corn borer, and the Western bean cutworm.
This is why I have no problem shit canning the Iowa caucuses. Even Al Gore admitted that the biofuels programs were an environmental disaster to minimal benefit. But it is making investors in agribusinesses extremely rich. Most of them people like Bill Gates, not farmers like Iowahawk's dad.
At some point the true believers are going to, as happened in the Soviet Union, to come to realize that it's all been a lie.
I hope it will succeed as well. To be followed closely by similar suits regarding solar and wind energy production.
Ethanol as fuel is one of the stupidest things (that I know of...) our federal government is involved with. It gets bipartisan support, of course.
No laws can constrain the Religion of Climate Change. How dare you!
"The agency has twice ignored court orders to study the impacts..."
Come one EPA! You can't ignore two court orders. Who do you think you are? The FBI?
"Biodiesel", especially in Europe, is vastly worse than corn, which is bad enough. Most biodiesel is made with palm oil, and native orangutan is being cleared and lost in order to plant oil palms. Typically, most greenies cannot think past their virtue signals, let alone understand beyond them to even second-order implications and consequences.
"Lawsuit says US environmental agency ignores harm of biofuel production"
Now do wind turbines and solar farms. But clearly, we have to ruin the environment to save it.
One the one hand my bias makes me say "No kidding". On the other hand, if the Center for Biological Diversity is behind the lawsuit, I have serious doubts about it. They did a "study" that stopped a housing development near me. The study was such BS, that I don't think they even set foot on the property. They claimed the development was a threat to fairy shrimp, which need standing water. The property is on a hill with no standing water, not even during last winter's heavy rains, so the shrimp cannot be present with or without the development. It makes me think they did their research via Google Maps. They have no credibility in my opinion.
It is very unlikely that biofuel is directly affecting any endangered species, that's a pretty outrageous and spurious claim IMO. But growing food to turn it into gasoline is just stupid. It arose out of a sense of shortage back in the 70s, which we don't have now, and then got morphed into an environmental virtue, which is dubious at best.
Our political leadership should be tossing it - it's a huge drag on the economy. Eliminate the subsidies for new projects, wean agriculture off the market gradually to eliminate any shock effects, and then set a timeline for established investments to pay out and let them get de-commissioned as they age out of profitability.
I live in the Cornhusker State. Our rivers, creeks and lakes have never been better. You could swim in the Missouri River if you wanted to. That was impossible when I was a kid.
I tubed the Middle Loup River earlier in the month. Saw a beaver, turkey and eagle.
Subsidies are bad. I’m surprised this one survives. Once Democrats put the fix in they shouldn’t couldn’t care less about what voters in IA think, and means more money to waste on graft…
I thought, at its inception, the biofuels program was suppose to address US vulnerability to foreign oil supplies in the wake of the Arab Oil Embargo. Of course, we now can source all our own oil if the politicians would allow it. And, as always happens, the program has become a political sop for vested interests.
Nuke the whales!
Has any candidate, in either party, EVER campaigned in Iowa and advocated for an end to this, the most obvious of pork (or close to it), and won Iowa? Eventually won the nomination? No idea, but I’d sure lay good money that the answer is No. would you vote for someone who ever did this? I sure would, pending further review….would love a special Althouse vote to find out.
Has any candidate, in either party, advocated in Iowa for an END to this, the most obvious of pork (or close to it), and won its primary? Eventually won the nomination? No clue, but I’d bet good money the answer is No. Would you vote for him/her? I would pending further review. Would love an Althouse poll to know also?
"The agency has twice ignored court orders ..."
After the United States Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden's illegal, unconstitutional student loan forgiveness scheme never voted on by the Congress, he announced a new one.
The NYTimes estimates this new program Biden announced will cost US taxpayers $495 billion dollars. The United States Congress has never voted to spend that money. Our President unilaterally declared it.
We do not live in the country that you people think we do. We no longer live in a lawful country. Courts have no power here. Because judges are too afraid to jail agency employees who ignore their orders.
Orders.
These people take their cues from the President of the United States. And the President of the United States has made it clear that he is above the law. He is above courts. He is above even the Supreme Court.
It's high treason.
We have an Executive branch that thinks that its rules and regulations have the force of law and can override the courts and the legislature. Congress has enabled this by writing laws that are deliberately vague enough to enable them to deny responsibility for what the Executive agencies that they create or empower do with them. This allows them to focus on their main business of getting re-elected without any accountability for what the Federal government actually does, while blaming the courts or the President for anything the voters don't like.
The present Supreme Court lineup seems of a mind to rein in the Executive branch and start forcing the Legislative branch to legislate. A welcome change. It's going to take a lot of lawsuits, though, and you and I will pay for the lawyers whose mission it is to help keep power concentrated with the Executive branch. Note that I don't say "The President". I don't think the current inhabitant is running things, and career bureaucrats seem to think their job is to execute the policies they'd like to see rather than what the elected head of the Executive branch got elected to do.
Now, let's talk about how many birds -- including eagles -- go through the wind turbine meat grinder. It's not an insignificant number.
destruction of our environment isn't a flaw.. it's a feature
destruction of our economy isn't a flaw.. it's a feature
destruction of ability to travel isn't a flaw.. it's a feature
destruction of America isn't a flaw.. it's a feature
Once you see that.. It ALL makes perfect sense
Since the Second World War has the government done anything worthwhile ?
I don't think so.
Blogger Rhonda said...
Has any candidate, in either party, EVER campaigned in Iowa and advocated for an end to this, the most obvious of pork (or close to it), and won Iowa?
McCain, to his credit, opposed the ethanol mandate and did not campaign in Iowa in 2000.
Excellent. It was just a few days ago I saw Trump bragging how he saved the ethanol subsidy to a crowd in Iowa. So now we "suddenly" have this story. Trump is still running them like a sled dog team to carry him where he wants to go.
Rhonda-As I recall, Ted Cruz opposed ethanol subsidies in Iowa in 2016. He won. I can't think of anybody else, win or lose, who actually said that he or she was opposed to ethanol subsidies.
Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen."
Catch-22
When discussing "biofuels" its important to be precise about which ones you are directly addressing as the range of biofuels/biogases in economic viability and practicality are quite broad.
I used to live in a state that required gasoline to have at least 10% ethanol. When I moved to another state without that requirement I was startled to find my vehicles were getting 10% more miles per gallon.
Whatever that corn likker is doing, it's not propelling the car forward.
Many of the cornerstones of the environmental movement are counter productive or, at the least far less useful than the money and effort involved.
Take recycling for example.
One lesson the climate alarmists will not take away from this:
The biofuel mandates were written and passed by people who were every bit as convinced of their expertise about climate change and solutions to it as the current crop of idiots.
Funny how the environmentalist gestapo was goose stepping for switching to corn ethanol biofuel. And its biggest proponents? Corrupt Senator Dick the dick Durbin (D)-Chicago, and his colleague President Obama (former Senator (D)-Chicago) who have us Solyndra.
The rapidly growing demand for corn ethanol, fueled by a government mandate to produce 136 billion liters of biofuel by 2022—more than 740 percent more than was produced in 2006—and federal subsidies to farmers to grow corn, is causing a land-use change on a scale not seen since virgin prairies were plowed and enormous swaths of the country’s forests were first cut down to grow food crops.
Is this incorrect? it turns out that statistics are not kept of grasslands being converted to biofuel production, which seems very convenient for agribusiness investors looking to cash in on climate related fear-mongering, however, there are lines of evidence leading to the inference that these lands are being plowed under:
First, the amount of land enrolled in the CRP peaked at 14.9 million hectares (ha) in September 2007. In October 2007, Conservation Reserve Program [CRP} lands had declined by 931,000 ha (USDA 2007). Of those lands no longer in the program, 850,000 ha were grasslands, and the remainder had been enrolled to promote tree or wetlands conservation practices. Second, the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 reduced the total area that may be enrolled in the CRP to 12.9 million ha by 2010, which ensures that the trend of expiring CRP acres and declining enrollments will continue.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/59/9/767/248461
And let's all pretend that the prairie chicken is not being robbed of its habitats so that we can pretend we are arresting change in a climate that has been changing since time immemorial. But that bird is not being driven to extinction as much by biofuels as it is by wind development. It turns out that the prairie chicken has no defense against raptors if you give raptors a place to perch and hunt, which is exactly what we are doing with wind development. They require large expanses of land without trees or other places for hawks to perch to survive.
"When I moved to another state without that requirement I was startled to find my vehicles were getting 10% more miles per gallon."
They make sure to jigger the subsidies so that it's cheaper to burn native prairie by the square foot for your commute. The subsidies are required because biofuels do not give the same mileage. I buy non-ethanol gas anyway for my car when I can, but I don't pretend it doesn't cost me money, but I don't want to be a part of this environmental disaster where I can help it.
Dave.
If you truly want to preserve those resources buy hunting and fishing licenses. Even if you don't use them the fees go to conservation. The same goes for state and federal duck stamps. By law those fees go directly to conserving those resources. That cuts out the avocacy middle men like TU and DU.
They're just as dead from growing arugula as making corn ethanol.
"Whatever that corn likker is doing, it's not propelling the car forward."
Your car was operating under the influence of alcohol; it was impaired.
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