OPINION/COMMENTARY


Very, Very Big Corn

President Bush made a big push for alternative fuels in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, calling on Americans to reduce gasoline consumption by 20% over 10 years. And as soon as the sun rose on Wednesday, he set out to tour a DuPont facility in Delaware to tout the virtues of "cellulosic ethanol" and propose $2 billion in loans to promote the stuff. For a man who famously hasn't taken a drink for 20 years, that's a considerable intake of alcohol. A bit of sobriety would go a long way in discussing this moonshine of the energy world, however. Cellulosic ethanol--which is derived from plants like switchgrass--will require a big technological breakthrough to have any impact on the fuel supply. That leaves corn- and sugar-based ethanol, which have been around long enough to understand their significant limitations. What we have here is a classic political stampede rooted more in hope and self-interest than science or logic. Ostensibly, the great virtue of ethanol is that it represents a "sustainable," environmentally friendly source of energy--a source that is literally homegrown rather than imported from such unstable places as Nigeria or Iran. That's one reason why, as Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren note in the Milken Institute Review, federal and state subsidies for ethanol ran to about $6 billion last year, equivalent to roughly half its wholesale market price. Ethanol gets a 51-cent a gallon domestic subsidy, and there's another 54-cent a gallon tariff applied at the border against imported ethanol. Without those subsidies, hardly anyone would make the stuff, much less buy it--despite recent high oil prices. That's also why the percentage of the U.S. corn crop devoted to ethanol has risen to 20% from 3% in just five years, or about 8.6 million acres of farmland. Reaching the President's target of 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017 would, at present corn yields, require the entire U.S. corn harvest. No wonder, then, that the price of corn rose nearly 80% in 2006 alone. (See the chart nearby.) Corn growers and their Congressmen love this, and naturally they are planting as much as they can. Look for a cornfield in your neighborhood soon. Yet for those of us who like our corn flakes in the morning, the higher price isn't such good news. It's even worse for cattle, poultry and hog farmers trying to adjust to suddenly exorbitant prices for feed corn--to pick just one industry example. The price of corn is making America's meat-packing industries, which are major exporters, less competitive....


Bingaman Global Warming Bill Won't Come Cheap

Draft global warming legislation from Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) is being billed as a moderate middle way to control greenhouse gas emissions, but in fact it will increase consumer energy costs, chill investment in new coal-fired power plants, and usher in a new era of anti-energy litigation. An analysis by the Energy Information Administration shows that the Bingaman plan will increase coal prices by 81 percent and reduces the growth of coal capacity by half. As a result, consumers' electricity bills in 2030 would be 11 percent higher than what they otherwise would have been. “But EIA’s analysis doesn’t take into account the political dynamic that would be unleashed,” said CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis. “The whole point of this exercise is to change what the fight in Washington is about. Instead of debating whether to suppress fossil energy use, we'll continually have to debate how much and how fast to suppress it.” Moreover, since Congress will have effectively classified carbon dioxide (CO2) as a regulated pollutant, green groups and State attorneys general will sue EPA to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards for CO2. “Anyone who thinks Bingaman's plan offers regulatory certainty is naive. The only certainty is that regulatory costs will grow unpredictably,” said Lewis. “The Bingaman bill is like the misleading sales pitches used car salesmen once used,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy. “They get you to buy because the first month’s payment is only $49. But the next month you notice that all the other payments are $499.”


Bush Energy Policy Fails Taxpayers and Consumers

The White House’s energy goals focus on reducing gasoline consumption by 20% in the next 10 years, largely through mandating wider use of more expensive alternative fuels and increasing the severity of fuel economy standards which have been shown to compromise vehicle safety. “Bush’s proposals amount to a giant step back from the goal of a rational energy policy,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Energy Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Instead of increasing affordable and reliable energy supplies, tonight’s plan would raise gas prices on consumers while making the U.S. less economically competitive as transportation costs rise. Raising energy prices significantly would make Americans less, not more, secure.” “The real beneficiaries of raising the mandatory use of alternative fuels from 7.5 to 35 billion gallons per year would be special interests because consumers would be required to buy their higher-priced fuels, which by the way already receive outlandish taxpayer subsidies,” said Ebell. “President Bush is proposing a huge expansion of the corporate welfare state.”....


Lawsuit Targets Feds’ Proposed "Endangered" Listing of American Fisher in California and Pacific Northwest

Pacific Legal Foundation announced today a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s proposed listing of the American fisher as "endangered" in California and the Pacific Northwest. The fisher is a small weasel-like animal found in parts of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, along with various other areas in the western United States. PLF represents Sierra Forest Products, a family-run sawmill in Tulare County that might have to close if the listing of the fisher is allowed to go forward. In addition, forest management to prevent catastrophic fires in the Sequoia National Forest, and other national forests, will be impeded if the fisher is listed as "endangered," according to PLF. The federal government currently is planning to list the fisher as "endangered" in California and the Pacific Northwest. "That would be a serious mistake – and blatantly illegal," said PLF attorney Damien Schiff. "When the fisher is looked at from the perspective of the entire North American continent, everyone agrees there is no risk of extinction. But the feds are focusing on particular geographical areas – such as the Sierras – where the fisher’s numbers aren’t so abundant. The feds are wrong to do this without first determining that the fisher on the West Coast is not a ‘subspecies.’ The Endangered Species Act does not permit ‘cherry picking’ of geographical areas, when determining the viability of a subspecies. So far, the government has made no official determination that the fisher in California and the Pacific Northwest is, or is not, a subspecies. Until such a determination has been made, the feds cannot proceed with this listing."....


AN EDUCATION CRISIS: TOO FEW NATURAL RESOURCES SCIENTISTS

Next week, former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter will become Colorado’s 41st Governor. Although Ritter pledged to reform higher education, it remains to be seen if he will provide the assurance sought by a journalism student in Ritter’s University of Denver debate with Congressman Bob Beauprez. Writing in National Review Online, Greg A. Pollowitz reports she asked, “What is the government going to do to make sure I can get a job?” Regrettably, the candidates gave lengthy answers instead of responding simply, “Change your major.” That would have made clear that the student and not government is responsible for her employment prospects. Moreover, it would have been great advice. Today, energy and mining companies are paying top dollar for petroleum and mining engineers: graduates will receive a starting salary of $65,000 plus a sizeable signing bonus. A recent Colorado School of Mines Mining Engineering graduate received a $120,000 package from an energy company developing Canada’s Athabasca oil sands. Unfortunately, there are too few such qualified graduates; as a result, not only are those jobs going begging, top executives in the oil patch and mining are calling the situation a “crisis.” Accepting the “Mining Man of the Year” Award from the Mining Foundation of the Southwest in Tucson, last month, Jack E. Thompson, Jr., formerly of Newmont Mining Corporation and Homestake Mining Company, delivered his acceptance speech on the crisis. Dr. James V. Taranik, Director of the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering at the University of Nevada in Reno, has been leading the Mining Educational Sustainability Task Force for the Society of Mining Engineers to develop an action plan to address the crisis, which is due in part to the state of post-secondary education. When Jack Thompson, Jim Taranik, and other mining leaders entered college, there were over forty institutions of higher learning offering mining engineering degree programs, including Harvard, Columbia, and Yale; today there are but fifteen....