Remember the good ol' days when the only impact my energy use had on the global food supply was a long and distorted series of causal effects ? You know, I drive and it heats up the earth and then El Nino is more violent somehow and that affects Mexican corn supply which affects tortilla production... which creates a real catch-22 when I drive long distances to buy a burrito.

But it turns out that the causation between my energy use and the availability of food worldwide is becoming much more direct and much less theoretical. With the rise of biofuels we have basically turned food into gas and as you know from taking economics your junior year of high school the more demand there is for a product the more the price goes up. The problem here is that when I'm using crops to fuel my car it raises the price of crops worldwide. So when the demand is larger than the supply the price goes up and the product goes to the buyer who is willing/able to pay the most. Needless to say, even on a teacher's salary, I'm outbidding small Bangladeshi children and Peruvian widows for the crops that would be food to them, but will be gas to me.

This isn't easy for me to write. The state that I grew up in and love (Iowa) is reaping many of the rewards of the biofuel revolution and it makes it even harder that my grandfather was a farmer and we still have a number of family members who farm the family land. The problem is that it's getting more and more difficult to ignore what prosperity in my own state and family means in the rest of the world.

I don't think I would be writing this right now if I hadn't read the Time Magazine article below that describes just how inefficient and ineffective biofuels are. First off ineffective. Biofuels were supposed to be the "green energy" of the future. Well, that didn't pan out. Biofuels are hard to make. The energy it takes to create ethanol from basically any crop except sugar cane (which has other problems with its ability to be processed) works out to be a "push" compared using traditional sources of energy (coal, oil, etc.) and because the processing of biofuels takes so much energy the green house gas emissions from field to fuel are also about the same as with traditional energy sources.

Now let's deal with how inefficient biofuels are. This is the point that has galvanized the issue for me. Here's the stat: with the amount of crops that it takes to fill up an SUV with ethanol (one, single time) a person can eat for 365 days! (see Time article) That's crazy! If you live in the United States you may have heard of the world's "food crisis," but really you better know it by its American name-The Gas Crisis. I get that gas prices are expensive, but just punch me in the face if I ever even subconsciously think that me driving 200 miles is in any way, shape or form equivalent to someone eating for a year.

I know there are a number of factors here, and that it's not as simple as just halting biofuel production and then the world becomes a variable Old Country Buffet. But if you're thinking that biofuels are only having a small part to play in the world food crisis you're mistaken... so says the secret report done for the World Bank (see article below). It was estimated by the US Government that biofuels have pushed up food prices by 3%. Close, but no cigar. Actually the World Bank report estimates that biofuels have caused food prices to rise by 75%!!! Just missed it by 72%. (Read the previous sentence with the same tone and inflection Bob Uecker uses in the movie Major League when he describes a pitch that's 10 feet off the plate as "just a bit outside.") And here's what really kills me-the report was intended to remain secret to help some politicians save face. At what point do we stop play politics? Just tell us what is happening and what mistakes we've all helped to make and then let's fix it! But apparently we are moving in the opposite direction.

In the 2000 Republican Presidential election John McCain was the rare candidate who spoke out against biofuels, calling them out for many of the reasons that I've just written about. In fact, he was so against biofuels that he skipped Iowa altogether because he knew his views on biofuels wouldn't win him many votes there. But lately McCain's tune has changed... he's learned to play the game and as of 2006, with a presidential run in sight, began calling biofuels a "vital alternative energy source."

So after all that I must admit that I don't know what to do about all this (save forward my write-up here to your congressperson). But I can say this... I am learning how interconnected our world is and am learning that I can't just assume that I can live my life without ever having to change and that no one else will really be all that affected. So I've taken a view that is still a bit convoluted, but doesn't wait to see what the effects of my actions are. I'm sick of waiting to hear how another of my luxuries is contributing to a problem across the globe. At this point I've heard enough to assume that most of my luxuries at least have potential for ill on the other side of the world (or twenty miles east in the inner-city of Chicago), and because of this I've started to question what these luxuries are getting me... and to be honest I like what that is doing to my perspective on the world and my perspective on people that I interact with everyday.

Time Magazine article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975-1,00.html

World Bank Report: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy

Comments (1)

sarah said:

... Matt- Thanks for the honesty and humility in your approach. I have been quite removed from this debate in the last few years, but am eager to read up the latest research. As always- thanks for sharing.

November 17, 2008

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