OPINION/COMMENTARY

Don't believe the hype-- at least not all of it President Bush has called upon consumers to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years, and he’s counting on ethanol to be a big part of that reduction. Ethanol certainly carries some promise. It’s a renewable resource, unlike oil. It can be produced right here in the United States, boosting local economies and reducing the need for imported fuel. And it’s more environmentally friendly than gasoline. But these benefits don’t come cheaply. Over the last year, a gallon of blended ethanol fuel has cost 50 cents to a dollar more than regular gasoline. That means consumers of ethanol fuel pay between $7.50 and $15 more each time they fill up at the pump. Why the higher cost? Many levels of government — local, state and federal — mandate a certain amount of ethanol for each gallon of fuel. As a result, there’s an artificially high demand for ethanol, which drives up the price. Unfortunately, those government mandates don’t simply increase the price of ethanol. They also put upward pressure on the prices for ethanol ingredients — which in turn inflates the prices of goods that use the same ingredients. Livestock farmers and food producers now have to pay a premium for corn. We feel the impact as prices for beef and cornflakes go up. Also, the benefits of ethanol are frequently exaggerated. Cars usually get 30 percent fewer miles per gallon with an ethanol blend than they do with regular gasoline. Burning more fuel, even if it’s slightly cleaner, will have very little, if any, positive effect on the environment. In fact, one prominent Australian study concluded that burning ethanol creates more pollution than burning gasoline....

ETHANOL VEHICLES A HEALTH HAZARD Ethanol advocates say that it's a clean-burning fuel that is friendly to the environment. But a study by Stanford University atmospheric scientist Mark Z. Jacobson found that if all U.S. vehicles ran on ethanol, the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations would likely increase. Jacobson's work, reported in Environmental Science & Technology, involved the simulation of atmospheric conditions throughout the United States in 2020, with a special focus on Los Angeles. According to Jacobson: * Research found that E85 vehicles reduce atmospheric levels of two carcinogens, benzene and butadiene, but increase two others -- formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. * As a result, cancer rates for E85 are likely to be similar to those for gasoline; However, E85 significantly increased ozone, a prime ingredient of smog. * The simulations revealed that E85 would increase ozone-related mortalities by about 4 percent in the United States and 9 percent in Los Angeles. * In addition, the deleterious health effects of E85 will be the same, whether the ethanol is made from corn, switchgrass or other plant products. ''Today, there is a lot of investment in ethanol,'' Jacobson said. ''But we found that using E85 will cause at least as much health damage as gasoline, which already causes about 10,000 U.S. premature deaths annually from ozone and particulate matter." Source: "Ethanol Vehicles A Health Hazard," Science A Go Go, April 18, 2007. For text: http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070318010112data_trunc_sys.shtml

GREEN BUT UNSAFE Whatever the European Union's (EU) green vehicle plan's effectiveness is in slowing the pace of global warming, the regulatory impact assessment now being drawn up will need to consider a factor that is often overlooked: the safety of motorists. Says John D. Graham, dean of the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School. Nowhere in Brussels' 13-page plan is the word "safety" even mentioned. There are lessons the EU could learned from U.S. regulatory mistakes: * In 1974, Congress mandated a doubling in car fuel efficiency to 28 miles per gallon from 14; the rules duly led to a cut of fuel consumption. * However, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that they also resulted each year in 2,000 additional traffic deaths and 30,000 nonfatal injuries. Consequently, the United States suspended these fuel-economy rules in the 1990s for more than a decade. Brussels can avoid a similar debacle by trying to anticipate the auto industry's response to regulation, says Graham: * When a car maker is subjected to carbon-emission or fuel-economy constraints, it will often begin offering smaller vehicles (since lighter cars consume less fuel) to comply with environmental rules. * Given that Europe's car fleet is already much smaller than the U.S. fleet, downsizing could have even more severe consequences in Europe than it had across the Atlantic. More motorists die when two small cars collide than when two large cars collide. If both small and large cars are reduced in size, the decline in crush space adds risk for occupants in both vehicles, says Graham. Downsizing only the large cars is safer for the small cars, but it puts the occupants of large cars at greater risk in single-vehicle impacts (for example, when crashing into guardrails and trees) and in collisions with heavy trucks. Source: John D. Graham, "Green But Unsafe," Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2007. For text: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117685153371073226.html
Most mass transit riders in 50 years: Good news or bad? A few weeks ago I noticed a startling story in the “Money” section of USA TODAY. The main head announced purportedly good news: RIDERS CROWD PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEMS, and then came that surprising subhead: HIGHEST USE SINCE THE 1950’s AT MORE THAN 10 BILLION TRIPS. Sure enough, the body of the article explained that the American Public Transportation Association reported that ridership rose in 2006 some 2.9%, to reach the highest levels since 1957. Did you know that there were more people using mass transit during the ‘40’s and early ‘50’s than there are today? I most certainly did not. This is an astonishing revelation when you think about it. First of all, the population of the country was barely half what it is today—and yet more people rode mass transit. Moreover, during the last 50 years we’ve poured literally hundreds of billions of dollars into the most expensive, glitzy, ambitious mass transit projects in history--- BART in San Francisco, MARTA in Atlanta, MetroRail in LA, plus impressive new projects in Minneapolis, Portland and Washington DC, and nearly everywhere else. With all these elaborate new systems, with high-tech buses, with propaganda about global warming and government policies designed to force you out of your car, it’s astonishing to think that more people used mass transit when America had half the people it has today – and none of the high-tech, new rapid transit systems....

Freeing the Farm: A Farm Bill for All Americans Agricultural policy in the United States is interventionist, expensive, inequitable, and damaging to American interests abroad.Over the last 20 years, the opportunity cost to American consumers and taxpayers of supporting agricultural producers has totalled over $1.7 trillion.The harm to agricultural producers abroad, including many developing countries, does not help U.S. foreign policy. American intransigence over reducing farm subsidies is a significant impediment to a successful conclusion to the Doha round of world trade talks. It is time for the government to get out of the business of managing agricultural markets and supporting the incomes of farmers, many of whom are relatively well-to-do. Removing barriers to agricultural imports will provide cheaper food for consumers and inject competition and dynamism into agricultural markets. Democrats took Congress partly by criticizing fiscal irresponsibility. Dismantling farm income support programs is a perfect opportunity to make good on the promise to make changes for the better. Because the first-best solution of completely ending farm programs as of September 30, 2007—with no compensation or transition payments—is politically infeasible, we advocate that the government buy out the damaging and expensive support for farmers by paying them a fixed amount of money, which they would be free to spend as they wish. Although it would require large up-front outlays, a politically expedient buyout of agricultural subsidies and trade barriers, with concrete steps to ensure the changes are permanent, would be a worthwhile investment. The 2007 Farm Bill provides an opportunity for less government interference with rural America....

Plight of the Bumblebee Beekeepers in at least 24 states are reporting a huge number of empty honeybee hives this spring. Strangely, few dead bees are being found in the hives, so it appears that the hives are empty because bees are not returning from foraging. Since honeybees are the hard working pollinators of a lot of American crops, this is really bad news. But the cause for what is being called "colony collapse disorder" (CCD) is not at all clear. Unfortunately, honeybees in the United States have been under pressure in recent years by new infestations of parasites, especially the varroa mite. The varroa mite, which sucks bee blood and which may pass along infectious diseases, was first identified in Java in the early part of the 20th century. The mite has been spreading around the globe and apparently made its way to Florida around 1987. Mites are now found throughout the United States and controlling them has become a major concern of beekeepers. In their sadly predictable knee-jerk fashion, environmentalist ideologues cannot resist making biotech crops the bogeyman in this unfolding agricultural tragedy. The Sierra Club recently launched a letter writing campaign to Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) hinting that biotech crops may be responsible for CCD. The Sierra Club writes: "The cause of CCD is unknown. Although factors being considered include pesticides, mites, microbial disease and habitat decline, there's a possible link that's not being investigated. Highly respected scientists believe that exposure to genetically engineered crops and their plant-produced pesticides merit serious consideration as either the cause or a contributory factor to the development and spread of CCD. In searching for the cause of massive honey bee losses nationwide, we must leave no stone unturned to find the answer." The vast majority of current biotech crops are enhanced with genes for herbicide tolerance (to ease weed control) and B.t. toxin to kill caterpillar pests. In its anti-biotech letter, the Sierra Club lists a number of studies that it suggests will show that biotech crops are harming bees. It either has not read the studies it cites or it's hoping nobody will actually read them. For example, the first study from the "highly respected scientists" the Sierra Club cites actually contradicts the notion that biotech crops hurt bees....

Supreme Court Goes Nuclear Who are the big winners and losers in Monday's monumental Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA? A sharply divided 5-4 decision found that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles -- most notably carbon dioxide -- despite the fact Congress has considered and rejected such proposals in the past. Taking its judicial activism one step further, the Court ruled the agency must provide a sound scientific rationale if it chooses not to regulate them in the future. Press accounts naturally touted this ruling as a profound victory for environmentalists. Indeed, a number of well-known environmental organizations were plaintiffs along with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The media also spun the ruling as a defeat for the Bush Administration, the Big Three automobile manufacturers, and even the coal industry, since the ruling appears to make inevitable the sort of federal regulation of carbon dioxide emissions that Congress earlier passed on. Indeed, though the scope of Massachusetts v. EPA was confined only to automobile emissions, the case was considered a stalking horse for regulating all greenhouse gas emissions. The ruling left environmental activists ecstatic. A representative for the Sierra Club, one of the co-plaintiffs, said the decision "sends a clear signal to the market that the future lies not in dirty, outdated technology of yesterday, but in clean energy solutions of tomorrow like wind, solar." Not quite. A fairer reading would indicate that the signal sent is that a majority exists on the Supreme Court willing to disregard Congress and rewrite the laws with which it disagrees. The irony is that the beneficiary of Monday's ruling won't be wind power, solar power, or any of the other renewable technologies favored by the Green establishment. Their economic and technological limitations are too severe for them ever to occupy more than a small niche in the American energy economy. Instead, one of the winners from Massachusetts v. EPA just may be something that many of the environmentalists who brought the suit have long abhorred: nuclear power. Like renewables, nuclear power generates electricity with no pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions. But unlike renewables, nuclear is capable of generating reliable power on a massive scale, which is what our country's future energy demands will require....