Corn in the US is mostly used for harmful purposes. It's used for producing fodder for intensive cattle farming (which of course produces lots of CO2). It's used for biofuel production, which as the article observes releases more CO2 than that it saves. And it's used for producing corn syrup which is an ingredient that nobody needs in their diet.
The rest, which would be usage for e.g. corn bread or other staples of North American cuisine, is of course fine. Nothing wrong with e.g. organically farmed corn. It's a crop that does well under a wide range of circumstances and popular for that reason all over the world. And as a grain, it's an important part of food production.
So, why does this exist? Very simple, federal subsidies to states that have become very dependent on that. Kill the subsidies and that whole industry slowly dies. That would be a good thing. Maybe repurpose the subsidies to have those farmers do something that actually is more productive and less harmful.
Iowa has the first primary every year in the US[1]. Iowa produces more corn than any state[2] while being 32nd in population. Corn is very important to people in Iowa and as long as the first two facts remain the same, corn will continue to be highly subsidized and supported in other ways by the US government.
It would be good for Americans to understand how their layered elections work out into something quite undemocratic. Designed to be so [1] in fact. Things don't need to be this way, and to set the country up for bad incentives this way, but it requires understanding who exactly is fighting and benefiting from the current set up.
There are a lot of elected positions in the US that actually undermine democracy by themselves being democratically elected, such as sheriff, judge, and indeed election commissioner. These are jobs where the correct thing to do is often at odds with the popular thing to do, and favouring the latter over the former is potentially disastrous.
Precisely my point. Maybe that's not a very future proof plan for Iowa? That sounds like at some point they are going to have to cut loose from the federal handouts.
Yep. When it comes to specialization farmers are not excluded. All crops, if their production can be mechanized, need specialized tools to farm at scale. In Iowa at least this looks like combines that are tooled for corn and soybean to allow for cycling the fields every few years.
Outside of a relatively minuscule number of people who view politics/elections as sport no one cares and they’re treated the same on the national stage.
Iowa. Former Iowans here. The nation's politics have screwed Iowa, with it being the first primary state all manner of overt attempts of political favoritism occurs in there. The economy is screwed left, right, and sideways with all the attempts at political favoritism. And the intellectual mind there is equally turned around with large helpings of religious infringement on world views, and a material amount of corporate shenanigans because Iowa is tax favorable for corporate headquarters - most the Insurance and large publishing has corporate headquarters there.
Iowa's own laws have screwed Iowa. State law mandates the caucus occur at least eight days prior to any other state's proceedings (similarly, NH law mandates they be the first primary election). The DNC and RNC might also like it that way, but both states are complicit.
As if these states exist independently; come on, you know political operatives and dollars from every state, and every wealthy anyone anywhere on the planet flow into these states trying to influence American elections.
As always, a party's political beliefs are more complicated than being pro-[thing] or anti-[thing]. To steelman the GOP, I'd say that they're against welfare for individuals because for the most part they're transfer payments that don't require any "work" to obtain (short of filling out some forms). They think that's bad because it encourages laziness. To my knowledge farm subsidies aren't implemented that way. They're implemented as price supports or loan programs, so you still need to actually produce something to get that government money.
> To my knowledge farm subsidies aren't implemented that way.
You'd be wrong. Farm subsidies exist in several forms, but one is for letting fields that could produce x lying unused. Some "farmers" just sign up for that program every year and havent planted anything since they inherited the farm.
Paying someone to do something destructive in order to produce something you don't want isn't very smart, even if it keeps them busy in a way that fools them I to feeling productive. If we all did that it would be worse than doing nothing.
is growing corn a destructive activity on net? If it is, then we shouldn't just be cutting subsidies, we should be banning it outright. As it relates to this discussion (ie. "are republicans hypocrites because they're anti individual welfare but pro agricultural welfare"), we can safely assume that republicans don't think that and therefore aren't hypocrites. This is not to say whether growing corn is actually destructive or not, only that the republican view is at least self-consistent.
I'm not sure what your point is? Obviously they didn't intend for people to defraud the system. It's like asking "how can democrats be for welfare programs for the poor when fraud causes some of that to be diverted to non-poor criminals?"
Also the US is terrible at transitions. When manufacturing went overseas, we left the factory workers high and dry. We can end the corn subsidies while providing income and support for farmers to transition to other crops, but that starts to look more like traditional welfare.
That kinda sounds like the planned economy of the USSR. Just produce anything to spruce up the propaganda statistics regardless if the market wants it.
you could argue those corn farmers are too lazy to figure out a crop that is actually beneficial to society and are comfortable resting in their subsidized bubble.
I mean, you could also come up with plenty of other uncharitable explanations for why democrats/republicans endorse certain policies, but that's not helpful if your objective is to understand the other side.
It's not welfare it's a subsidy. And it's okay because it's for people we like, rural farmers who vote GOP, rather than people we don't like, inner city populations who vote Democrat.
Moderate libertarians hate welfare programs but their parties rarely win so their candidates often run under the GOP. The GOP just likes the status quo.
There is a law in Iowa that sets the date of our party caucuses earlier than the earliest primary. Our primaries are not first, rather it's the party caucuses here that are held as the first selection event in the Presidential race.
I am a rare Iowan in that I recognize that this system is dumb, and bad for the country. It's great for me - I have had the privilege of hearing in person in a small group setting every Democratic president since Jimmy Carter. I've talked with a couple of them. I can tell you from personal experience that Joe Biden's reputation as a "hands on" or "physical" campaigner was spot on - he embraced me as firmly and as intimately as any man every has (I am very rural looking, white male nearly his age, for the record). But for all that, the circus that is the Iowa caucuses is a stupid way to start the candidate selection process. I'd be happy to see the back of it.
I wonder what they would do if another state were to set state law specifying the same, or better still one week before Iowa. Would they both just keep moving their primary/caucuses back until it is set immediate after the inauguration of the last election or would the supreme court tell then both to knock it off and set the dates for everyone.
Both major political parties have passed rules that any state the precedes Iowa and New Hampshire will have their number of delegates (aka votes) cut to 1. That is, if they try, their votes literally won't count (except as a tie breaker).
Either party cannot afford to voluntarily give up so many electoral votes. If I understand it correctly, the # of electoral votes these states have give them enormous sway within the parties.
That's not how it works. The parties have passed a rule that if California or Texas has one of the first primaries they get changed to 1 electoral vote (well, one delegate, which is the equivalent except there are 10x as many delegates as electors) to decide on the party's nominee. So they would lose what influence they have.
The influence of big states within the party because of electoral votes is pretty small. The state's electoral votes are applied by the citizens of the state. I mean, yeah if you could get 50+% of Texas's voters to credibly promise to vote for the presidential candidate of the party that had an earlier Texas primary they would compete hard for it. But in reality, they're going to vote for the republican nominee. Same logic for California but for the democratic nominee.
The thing is that this system can be abused in either direction. To promote the candidate that the party leadership wants or to hijack the law and force an important delegate state to lose their influence.
Imagine if South Carolina was pushed to this one delegate system in 2020. Bernie Sanders was nearly the nominee and South Carolina began his death spiral. If South Carolina was taken out of play by activists in the state, then either the party would have to forgo its own rules or accept that Bernie would have continued his massive momentum coming out of Nevada.
Likewise if on Super Tuesday Buttigieg and Klobachar would not have dropped out at (supposedly) Obama's instance and backed Biden, then Bernie would have emerged much stronger. One way they could have blunted his momentum is if they saw polling early enough that Bernie was going to take a big state like California, we can't rule out the California machine pushing itself to lose the electoral votes in an effort to stop Bernie and then maybe change back its timeline after the election.
I don't know about the Republicans, but as far as Democrats go it's actually a rule:
Rule 12 Timing of the Delegate Selection Process
No meetings, caucuses, conventions or primaries which constitute the first determining stage in the presidential nomination process (the date of the primary in primary states, and the date of the first tier caucus in caucus states) may be held prior to the first Tuesday in March or after the second Tuesday in June in the calendar year of the national convention. Provided, however, that the Iowa precinct caucuses may be held no earlier than 29 days before the first Tuesday in March; that the New Hampshire primary may be held no earlier than 21 days before the first Tuesday in March; that the Nevada first-tier caucuses may be held no earlier than 10 days before the first Tuesday in March; and that the South Carolina primary may be held no earlier than 3 days before the first Tuesday in March.
This is what created "Super Tuesday", which is evidence of a race to the bottom that has gone as far down as it can go. It also shows that 4 states were carved out probably as favors (does anyone know more here?). In order to change this, probably a bunch of people who are being treated favorably now will get upset at losing their privilege, and no one in leadership wants to crack that egg. Seeing as that South Carolina, one of the favored states anointed to hold a primary before before Super Tuesday, played such a decisive role in the nomination of Joe Biden, I think the practice of keeping these states first is going to continue for the foreseeable future.
Jim Clyburn of S. Carolina is widely credited of resuscitating Joe Biden's candidacy after his sad start in IA, NH, and NV. He placed a distant 4th in IA, 5th in NH, and Bernie blew out NV with 40% of the vote. At that point, Clyburn endorsed Biden, and Biden ended up winning SC. Then a bunch of candidates dropped out of the race before Super Tuesday (some who were doing much better than Biden overall) and support coalesced behind Biden.
If anything, the slow roll of IA, NH, SC and NV allows the party to calibrate the primary process. If things start going a way they don't like, they can make quick changes like asking a bunch of candidates to drop out of the race (I'm not saying Bernie would have won had they not done this, I'm just pointing out it was obviously done, and what enabled them to do this was the fact that all primaries are not held on the same day).
>also shows that 4 states were carved out probably as favors (does anyone know more here?).
Probably not favors but codifying the status quo to get their endorsement on the rule. That said, I agree that it gives some states more power, but isn't completely useless. It allows the party to test how good candidates are at getting out the vote And adds some option for course correction.
Subcidies are 90% of the reason our country is turning to shit. It leads to corruption, massive distortions and zombie companies that only exist as parasites on tax payers. From the ballooning student debt, to the ridiculous military industry, to prisons being at record numbers, etc. We need a lean and efficient economy which functions "as is", a true and fair free market. Politics should have close to no impact on it and sadly, wirh forced lockdowns which did nothing good (0.2%) and bailouts being handed out like candy, we are very very far from the dynamism which made the country great and free. We need a minimal operating system for the people to run good games over it, we live in Windows Vista.
You're being downvoted to oblivion but you're speaking my language. Government needs to get out of the way and let people thrive, rather than stepping in to subsidize the ways they're failing and encourage them to continue.
Subsidies are the symptom. The reason is fed govt ability to create unlimited spending. The reason for that is 3rd central bank known as 'Federal Reserve' which manipulates interest rate on govt debt issuance.
Subsidies in general are enabled by deficit money printing which would presently be unaffordable without interest rate suppression.
Farm subsidies take various forms such as tax preferences, import tariffs, and a USDA organization specifically tasked with manipulating crop prices.
https://www.usda.gov/ccc
> Nothing wrong with e.g. organically farmed corn.
There is nothing wrong with “factory”, “industrially”, or “sustainably” farmed corn either. Farming at scale is the only thing that allows all 8 billion people to eat.
The romantic view people have of peasant farms is ruining all discourse about agriculture. I blame the books people read to toddlers.
Peasant farms were labor intensive, disease ridden, high risk, low reward businesses that shortened lives and ruined families. But somehow for a lot of people this episode in the history of farming is seen as the optimal blueprint for sustainable farming. They ignore the fact that all "successful" examples of small scale circular farming are making their revenue from donations, venues and from "selling" the model. Not from produce.
Similar with the artificial battle front between organic vs conventional/industrial, where each side claims the solution to sustainable food production, but no common ground is allowed.
By the way, not all children's books are equally naive. We've recently found a nice one [1] (in German) which shows small- and large-scale farms side-by-side, in a brutally honest way (including butchering).
If you're looking for similar books with realistic depictions of agriculture: No, that was a lucky find in the library.
In case you just want to practice German with media for children, I always recommend "Die Sendung mit der Maus" [1]. It's a mix of short animated stories with "how it's made" features, where they go filming in factories etc.
Well a lot of conventional farms that are hyperoptimized barely make enough money to get by. It is quite weird how we can't maintain something as basic as food security with a market based economy.
Farming is an efficient market due to the sheer number of competing agents, that drives the price to be close to the cost.
Markets are cyclic. When demand is higher than supply, prices go up, companies profit more and there's incentive for investment. Within time supply exceeds demand and prices go down, so companies barely make enough to pay off and those which are inefficient go broken and are sold, hopefully, to better managers.
This is generally a good thing but, of course, food/farming is of public interest. If prices go up those with lower income might struggle to feed themselves. And if prices go down poor farmers might struggle to survive and be forced into selling their land. Thus government intervenes.
What separates poor farmers from say poor food truck owners?
The issue with farm subsidies is they don’t actually change profitability long term, they simply result in over production. It’s vastly more efficient to build up a long term storage of surplus say 2 years of corn per American stored at -40C which should last ~100 years. Then let huge swaths of American farmers go bankrupt as you scale back production. This was the basic model hundreds of years ago, they still had famines.
Alternatively you can push productivity while paying pay farmers not to produce anything on their land. This keeps them from going bankrupt and requires fewer resources than excess production. We used to do this, it reduces the risk of famine because productivity can be scaled up quickly.
Finally you can just massively subsidize production and dump the excess on foreign markets, this is really bad for other countries and costs insane amounts of money and still results in excess production even as everyone gets fat. This is where bio fuels come in.
PS: There are also secondary effects as subsidizing farm insurance etc, keeps incompetent farmers in business.
"There are also secondary effects as subsidizing farm insurance etc, keeps incompetent farmers in business."
Any data to back that up? If you're incompetent and your crops repeatedly, then you're not going to be reimbursed enough to make it.
"It’s vastly more efficient to build up a long term storage of surplus say 2 years of corn per American stored at -40C which should last ~100 years."
Any data to back this up? This is a huge volume. Freezers capable of those temperatures are expensive and consume a lot of energy.
"The issue with farm subsidies is they don’t actually change profitability long term, they simply result in over production."
I think farm subsidies need to be changed or reduced, but for a slightly different reason. We are basically subsidizing other countries. A lot of our grains get exported, basically sending the fruits of those tax dollars overseas.
It’s not that people are completely incompetent it’s that some people are better at getting subsidies vs growing food. Essentially subsidies add a parallel skill set which becomes valuable but reduces the impact of being an inefficient farmer. I don’t have hard data, but have been told about people who are better at one side or the other.
> Any data to back this up.
The freezing thing was actually from a study I read. Ultra large freezers are very energy efficient via classic square vs cube scaling. The freezer loses energy on the surface and needs insulation along the surface while it and stores inside the volume. Energy costs of shipping vs colder climate etc.
The idea was a FIFO system along a circular storage system, but I don’t recall all the details.
Re: Freezers, yeah, I agree with this. Volume to surface area doesn't scale linearly[0], so you can build something like a giant sphere or cylinder and lose a relatively small amount of energy.
Commercial freezers are also frequently built with vacuum-insulated panels[1] which have very low thermal conductivity.
It's not crazy to build something very large, like a grain silo, to hold dried grain at a low temperature. That seems fairly plausible as a way to reliably "turn off" subsidies over time.
It sort of reminds me of the strategic oil reserve[2] in the US. Similar idea (boring holes in the earth cheaply via using water to etch into giant salt deposits)
That's because it makes no sense. The US consumes around 12 billion bushels of corn per year. Yes, some of that may be wasteful (corn syrup etc). But trying to store 24 billion bushels of corn without loss is simply impossible. Each bushel is roughly 1.25 cubic feet, so 2 years would be 30B cf. Imagine a storage unit 2 miles long, 2 miles wide, and 300 feet tall.
The point is to feed people not cows or cars, so your estimate is significantly off base.
A bushel of corn is 56 pounds. Assuming a very high 1lb of corn per person per day only gives 2 * 365 * 330 million / 56 * 1.25 = 5.4 billion cubic feet.
Which still sounds insane except AT&T Stadium in Dallas is 0.1 billion cubic feet and cost only 1.3 billion to construct while including all sorts of stuff we don’t need. So roughly one building that size per state. Even if it was almost that expensive vs a more realistic 1/10th, the cost of corn + ethical subsides would hit that in roughly a decade and we would could then spend a 1 billion a year cooling the things while saving money.
PS: Having just one building would look cool but would be a massive single point of failure. Also, you can store dry corn for quite a while even in non cryogenic conditions.
> What separates poor farmers from say poor food truck owners?
If all food trucks and restaurants disappeared off the face of the earth, people would mostly be able to feed themselves. The same is not true for farms.
> It is quite weird how we can't maintain something as basic as food security with a market based economy
We can't? Where's the famine? News to me. Last I checked we still have way more food than we know what to do with (massive worldwide fertilizer shortages and inflation notwithstanding).
Depends on what you mean by food security. We're guarenteed to have enough food without crop subsidies. We would just import a lot more than we export. The government seems that as a national security risk.
What was that one on Netflix that sold organic specialty produce to restaurants in Chicago? I thought that one was profitable without any sort of assistance.
Either way, we have several examples of local "peasant" farms, some organic, that do well.
They got a lot of exposure, even before Netflix. Now their model is to milk the brand they built. That's not traditional farming, that's marketing wrapped in farming.
Yeah, but if I remember correctly, actual farm operations were profitable, right? The marketing is just extra, or what it evolved into.
Don't get me wrong - small farms are a lot of work. For the most part, at least one member of the family has to have an outside job with benefits just due to healthcare costs. But it can make some money.
I hope to have a small farm as a "retirement" plan. It would mostly be an apiary for the commercial portion, maybe with some log and block grown mushrooms. Then the rest would likely be for personal use. Obviously the major costs like the initial land and health insurance would come from savings, so it would be mostly supplemental income to an already solid retirement plan. I don't think it will happen though.
I assume the biggest draw is the lifestyle ideals. It seems a common dream on this community. Maybe because we're tired of building some intangible thing or some app that nobody really needs, and want to have a physical job with meaningful produce.
> I assume the biggest draw is the lifestyle ideals.
A lot of people who have never physically worked a day in their life like the idea of hard labor. After a week of hard labor, they would decide to take up woodworking instead.
I think it depends on what we consider hard labor too. With all the mechanization today, hard labor has changed. Now it might be considered hard labor to run a log splitter and stack the wood, when in the past you'd be swinging a maul too. Like my grandpa used to plow field with a horse drawn plow, but now you just start up a tractor. So it evolves, and exactly what type of farming it is determines how physical it might be (although any of it is more physical than sitting in front of a screen all day).
Hehe reminds me of a volunteer day I set up for our team. They wanted to work on a farm that's part of the food bank. We spent maybe a half a day picking greens and squash. Most of them couldn't believe how "physical" it was - commenting about it being a workout or being tired.
The people who want to open a dairy farm that's kind to the cows comes to mind. Then they realize that cows need to be milked 2x a day, every day, forever.
> Yeah, but if I remember correctly, actual farm operations were profitable, right? The marketing is just extra, or what it evolved into.
Not really, there are different levels of profitable. Some extremely efficient operations can be profitable at scale, but no one is getting rich.
The places like you describe (have half a cow from one in my freezer now, from just outside Chicago) operate on marketing to upscale customers via advertising/co-marketing deals at fancy/local restaurants.
They also operate a number of farmers markets booths at about a half dozen markets in the city each weekend, and that is both a marketing and sales angle. This is where they pick up a large amount of their weekly subscriptions, and folks like me who order half a cow each year.
> I assume the biggest draw is the lifestyle ideals. It seems a common dream on this community.
I agree the idyllic dream sounds pretty great. However I'd suggest trying to not jump feet first into it. My parents were organic market garden farmers (one of their specialities was mushrooms), and if you need to at least break even your job will look far more like marketing/sales with a bunch of back-breaking physical labor in between than farming or gardening. Animal husbandry is just as involved with the bonus of random emergencies popping up at inconvenient times.
The successful farms in the space tend to focus their time on the "business side" of the operation, and have the standard hired help the large farms have to actually run most of the farm itself. If you've ever visited a "small farm" that did weekend tours this is typically the model they are utilizing.
At "hobby farm" level it can be pretty relaxing if you have no need for the income itself, and don't mind putting good money after bad towards equipment to make your life easier. I've seen these operations work out, but lots of times these folks have an extremely hard time integrating into their new community and tend to move on in a few years.
Just trying to provide a different perspective. Farm life is hard, and involves long hours for very little financial remuneration. I'd only even consider doing it as an absurdly over capitalized hobby.
I have a small apiary currently, so I understand the work and costs to a degree.
As a retirement "job", it could provide supplemental income. That's my goal.
If I'm not doing that, then what am I doing? I hate my job and don't see anything better. At least I could be physical rather than squander my health like my job requires now. Maybe make some money to cover hobby expenses, or use the land to save money by growing stuff for myself. Otherwise, I might as well sit in front of a TV in some suburban house while eating myself to death.
My country is one of the biggest agricultural exporters in the world yet less than 1% of the population works in the farming industry.
Farming is what drives all the mechanization and robotics research.
> Farming at scale is the only thing that allows all 8 billion people to eat.
False; you can feed 8 billion people using small scale / non-industrial farming as well, it just means more people would be working in the farming industry and the cost might go up. But industrial farming is not to provide food, but to provide raw resources - I mean this very article is about growing corn to turn into bioethanol to mix in fuel for cars.
> it just means more people would be working in the farming industry and the cost might go up.
You say that like it's a small thing. Keeping most of the population out agriculture and allowing them to produce other goods and services is the primary benefit of the agriculture industry.
> But industrial farming is not to provide food, but to provide raw resources - I mean this very article is about growing corn to turn into bioethanol to mix in fuel for cars.
Less than half of the corn produced in the US goes to ethanol production. Most of it goes towards feeding people - either directly or indirectly. If we include other produce, then the vast majority of the agriculture industry's output becomes food.
I am unimpressed by the idea that we can solve this with more technology. Some of those billions of people feed themselves. Theit biggest problem isn't minmaxing an 8t/ha yield to 11t/h. Their problem is getting from 1t/h to 6t/h which is entirely possible with just manure, some crop rotation and good quality seeds that can actually be resown.
The idea that e.g. hybrid rice is going to solve world hunger is absurd.
Not really. Small-scale sustainable farms produce more food per hectare than industrial farming. However, they are usually less profitable, since they need more manpower per hectare.
Efficiency in terms of money earned is not the same as efficiency in terms of food produced, and with a growing population and a diminishing area of arable land, one seems more critical than the other, especially when you consider that industrial farming tends to destroy topsoil and emits quite a bit of CO2, whereas small-scale sustainable farming usually does the opposite.
> Small-scale sustainable farms produce more food per hectare than industrial farming.
I thought that was only true in poor and developing countries but that large industrial farms in highly developed nations produced way more than everybody else. Have you a source you could share as this is a very interesting point?
Gabe Brown claims he can get more calories per acre than monoculture farms[0]. He also claims that it's more thought, but not much more physical work overall. His profits probably depend somewhat on premium pricing that wouldn't hold up if everyone followed his model, but a shift in subsidies could help that.
Yes, i found several people making that claim (or similar). Couldn't find any hard data to back it up, though (although i didn't search too hard since i'm at work :P)
Ha, no, you're right. Don't remember were i first heard it, but looking for the sources now, it seems that small farms are more productive in poor countries, but less productive than industrial farms in developed nations. However, the source i found for that [0] doesn't mention what techniques are used, and seems to only focus on size.
So now i'm curious if there is reliable data looking at differences in yield between farming techniques? (e.g. industrial/chemical vs organic vs permaculture)
There are all kinds of things "wrong" with the way we raise corn in this country. It's environmentally unsound (among other things, it's killing the Gulf of Mexico). It's not economically viable, absent significant government subsidies. It's the source of the worst (high fructose corn syrup) and second worse (too much meat in our diet) food induced health problems in the country. And it is, as the posted article points out, at the center of a huge "clean energy" scam.
We could contribute a great deal more to feeding the world, and doing less damage to the environment and our health, but alternative uses for much of the land that is in corn in the US.
Depends on how you look at it. Agriculture generally requires a lot of water. Much of this corn is being irrigated with water from the aquifers.
Sustainable farming is good, but I don't think we do very much of it. I wonder if there's any evidence that we can sustainably support 8 billion people.
>I wonder if there's any evidence that we can sustainably support 8 billion people.
it depends on the type of lifestyle you're willing to have and how much % of the GDP you're willing to pour into it. I'm sure you can sustainably feed all 8 billion people if we poured 50% of our GDP into food production and we only ate rice and beans.
"it depends on the type of lifestyle you're willing to have"
Not just oneself, but entire nations. Scarcity of resources have historically been a major cause of wars. I don't see the world coming to a consensus on lifestyle any time soon.
Fewer people is the answer. Is there a way to humanely, ethically, and justly limit the population?
Conventionally, talking heads seem to indicate the right way forward is to use tech and industrial agriculture to support 20bn+ on the planet. Seems totally doable, but at the cost of losing the natural environment as well as more natural food sources altogether.
Anyway, I say get us back to around 5bn people and keep it there.
Remove tax deductions for more than two kids per couple. Tax the suburbs more highly. Encourage couples to only have two kids just like we encourage people not to litter. Trade less with countries with high birth rates and raise fees on those countries’ environmental impact. All that could be done democratically, no?
Good luck getting the first two passed into law, at least in the US. "Encourage couples..." will get no traction. We still have a ton of littering, and all the religious groups in the US (the Quiver Full movement etc) will love that. Cutting trade based on a country's birth rate and adding tariffs based on EI etc will be extremely problematic.
Sure anything can be done "democratically." But politics is the art of the possible...
Sure, but would it be worth it? I suspect yes; the alternative is continued population growth leaving very little natural world on the entire planet and all of us eating an industrially farmed diet.
Is this helpful? I mean, we’ve already passed the point of too much natural habitat lost and too much industrial ag needed, so I think a number less then our current population is reasonable.
A few years back, I caught a ride with a cattle rancher while hitchhiking across South Dakota. We stopped by another rancher's property to give him an estimate of how his cows would sell at market. While we were there, we got to talking about how he'd pulled the cows off of one of his fields, and planted corn instead. Thanks to subsidies, it was more profitable to do that, even though herding cattle is really what he wanted to be doing.
Isn't this either obviously false (yes, corn is in lots of processed foods and oils and most animal feed, but people eat things that don't involve veg. oil, meat, and processed foods all the time) or vacuously true (if we're counting the lining of paper bags, then we should also count plastic made from corn-based ethanol, and trucks that use ethanol in their fuel, and drivers who eat meat which is fed with corn, and we breath air with oxygen produced from corn fields, and...)?
Wouldn't the CO2 from corn be drawn from the atmosphere in the first place? Sure, if you grow corn and let it die, parts of its CO2 content would be bound in the soil. But does that calculation make sense when we look at our fossil fuel consumption? Sure, every bit helps...
Sure, in that case it is just as bad. But I don't understand how it could ever be worse than gasoline since part of the CO2 in bio-ethanol should at least come from already unbound CO2.
Because the process from growing corn to distilling ethanol requires more energy than it produces. That energy has to come from somewhere, i.e. fossil fuels. It would be cleaner to just burn the fossil fuels than to run the energy through the Rube Goldberg machine of farm subsidies and ethanol.
Not literally true from the energetics point of view, but close enough that when you add in the other carbon releasing side effects (degradation of soil carbon, land clearing) that comes with increased corn production, it is a net carbon producer right now. That's what this study is all about.
Corn in particular is inefficient, burning corn produces less energy than the energy required to grow corn.
Sugarcane is the opposite, it grows easily (too easy in fact, it has tendency to spread in an unwanted way), doesn't require too much diesel to produce, and it makes a fantastic amount of ethanol when pressed.
Whoa there chief. The whole 'that would be a good thing' is an overreach. There are 'better' ways to spend that subsidy but having a steady surplus of food subsidy or not is a way better position for a country to be in than implementing some JIT mechanism with supply/demand set purely by market prices. Just because agriculture makes up a small % of GDP compared to tech we can more easily get rid of Google than we can get rid of grain.
You are arguing with a straw man. They said nothing of getting rid of food surplus or grain. They said to reallocate corn subsidies elsewhere. Presumably one destination could be other foods with greater nutritional value.
It's kinda hard to kill those subsidies when farmers have been used to them for 50 years, and it's a big political sticking point. The USDA exists to create more export crops. For the US, this might challenge that. That's also why the FDA can never rule that sugar or HFCS is harmful, it's a major American product, and that would be admitting that it's faulty.
"Just because you've always done things this way does not mean it is not incredibly stupid."
So, yes change is hard. But we need to change and this is kind of an obvious change to make. If we wait for the FDA to conclude that corn syrup is bad for you, we can indeed wait a long time.
So, don't wait for them and adjust their priorities at the federal level. That's what governments are for. You can't expect these agencies to do reasonable things by themselves when they are obviously stuck protecting the very unreasonable status quo. Bloat is the problem both in these agencies and the obese citizens whose interests they are supposed to protect.
What we need is shifting subsidies. Change the incentives year over year so farmer's can adapt. Maybe add some budget to incentivize faster changing without punishing the slower movers. Throw resources towards training and retooling.
I can agree with doing away with or changing the subsidies, but the rest of your comment, unilaterally declaring meat to be bad, corn syrup to be universally bad, and for some reason declaring that "organic" whatever that means today, makes something better somehow, is just a bunch of today's talking points.
The research is still out about whether HFC is processed differently in the body. What isn't really up for debate is the pervasiveness of HFC in everything. Because it's subsidized and so cheap, it excess has made it a cheap raw material that's found in just about everything from Tomato Sauce to Bread.
Too much sugar in your diet is bad, and so it isn't much of a stretch to say that having a ridiculously cheap source of sugar that's being added as filler to every imaginable product is probably not great for us.
> and for some reason declaring that "organic" whatever that means today, makes something better somehow
I think the op was trying to say that corn is a hearty crop that grows fine on it's own without a lot of petrochemical fertilizers.
I'll only respond by saying that the kind of assumptions I outlined above are exactly the same kind of assumptions (XX == GOOD, YY == BAD) based on politics with a hint of science, that led to us having corn-based ethanol in the first place.
I feel like this is where inflation can be pretty helpful. Just like it's near impossible to retire legacy production code, it seems pretty politically difficult to roll back these subsidies. But simply waiting for the inflation to make them irrelevant might be a lot easier.
That's helpful. Whenever I hear people rail against corn, I think of all the corn dishes I love as a southerner. Cornbread, grits, corn on the cobb, and at Thanksgiving, corn pudding. My wife has got me to like polenta as well. But those aren't the problems.
Ethanol is not a terribly good fuel and causes lots of problems in engines which have seals that weren't designed for it. Engines are also prone to knocking as the energy profile of (enhanced) fuels is different.
I thought Ethanol has a very high octane rating (~110-120 RON) and therefore would reduce knocking compared to regular 85-95 RON fuels. I'm sure it has plenty of other problems though.
Ethanol is awesome when it comes to knock resistance because it is much slower burning than gasoline is with all other parameters being equal. Where it bites is that it requires better seals than gasoline, and it has lower energy density, which means you need higher flow fuel pumps, tubing, filters, and injectors to make the same power.
Do that, though, and you can run a turbocharged engine at much higher levels of boost and create much more power than you would be able to do with anything short of race gas or even more exotic and dangerous fuels.
>Kill the subsidies and that whole industry slowly dies. That would be a good thing.
For you, maybe. Not for the millions of rural Americans whose livelihood depends on agriculture subsidies. There's a reason why we have the Senate, a place where Nebraska has the same power as California. It's exactly for situations like this. The US is a massive country full of competing interests, and our founders knew that eventually the urban population would massively outnumber the rural population, leading to a tyranny through rule of the majority. So states were put on equal footing in the Senate to give the rural populations a voice. And because of that, the Senate will never ever allow these subsidies to be cut. There's simply too much support for it among the rural states.
That's the Civil War argument: "we know that slavery is wrong, but we can't just end it because livelihood of millions of good upstanding citizens depends on slavery." And just like slavery, the corn syrup industry exists solely because of a law protecting it.
Industries and business absolutely have to be allowed to die if they are no longer necessary and desired by the market. If not, you're just kicking the can down the road. Give them a UBI if you are so concerned. Don't prop up zombie industries.
>Industries and business absolutely have to be allowed to die if they are no longer necessary and desired by the market.
The defense industry would like to have a word with you. There are certain industries that the government props up solely to maintain the capability in times of crisis. I would argue that ensuring an adequate capacity to generate a self sufficient food supply is important enough to meet that bar.
Defence is necessary so it isn't a refutation of what I was saying.
Also, there is no way the US subsidies of food and billion pounds of cheese in cold storage etc etc have anything to do with a defence justification, it is pure corruption and zombie subsidies top to bottom.
A huge and good compromise would be to end the ethanol subsidies and only give it for human and cattle food. Anything else has to get by on what the market will bear.
>>Nothing wrong with e.g. organically farmed corn.
Curious, what is the signifier of "organically farmed" here - what benefits does it provide, how does its usage significantly differ of "non-organically farmed" corn?
> Kill the subsidies and that whole industry slowly dies. That would be a good thing. Maybe repurpose the subsidies to have those farmers do something that actually is more productive and less harmful.
So once we've put all the farmers out of work and declared success, what do you suggest they do that is "more productive"? Should they lease their corn fields to crypto bros?
Or... and I'm just spitballing here... perhaps switch to more productive crops? I would hope that no one believes we need fewer farmers here in the U.S. (we need more, IMO), but don't incentivize them to produce more of a given type of crop than actually makes sense.
Switching to more productive crops wouldn't end subsidies. In face, we'd - at first - need more just to make sure folks have the proper equipment. If you currently grow corn and soybeans* then your equipment will be specialized for them, generally.
I don't know about the current landscape, as it has been years since I've lived in the states, let alone mingled with farmers in the US, but at one point, they would pay farmers to allow a field to be unplanted. I find this to be a viable option when mixed with the above and the farmers I knew didn't complain either.
*Corn and soybeans are generally grown together, generally (but not always) in alternating years. Corn tends to deplete nutrients in soil, soy puts them back.
> Switching to more productive crops wouldn't end subsidies. In face, we'd - at first - need more just to make sure folks have the proper equipment. If you currently grow corn and soybeans* then your equipment will be specialized for them, generally.
So what you’re saying is that the market doesn’t work?
"So what you’re saying is that the market doesn’t work?"
I definitely do not back unregulated markets, and in general, do not think markets for food work. It isn't just food, but other things that are general necessities for the modern times. Utilities, roads, and medical care are other examples.
My point is that we can't simply change subsidies from corn to other things without thinking about the other things that would need funding in order to do that. I personally don't think all of it is bad: It is a food and feed crop, after all, but I think we could do with more variety in such crops (not so much reliance on corn, and definitely not for ethanol)
In the last century, kinda sorta. In the major corn producing region of the US (I live in Iowa, the heart of the beast), crop rotation is largely reduced to choosing, based on markets whether to grow corn or soybeans on any particular acre. Dairy farmers still grow some alfalfa here and there, but the black earth midwest is pretty much corn and soybeans, full stop.
By more productive, I mean something that is not a net negative contribution/actively harmful to our planet. If all farmers can do is convert subsidies into CO2 emissions for stuff that isn't technically needed, then we're better off with them not doing that. It's that simple.
This amount of corn is simply not needed and it never was. It only exists because of the subsidies. So, maybe grow stuff that is not contributing to destroying our planet and is actually worth something without a lot of subsidies. Organic farming seems pretty lucrative lately. Iowa has plenty of that happening already. There are plenty of things farmers can do that are actually needed that are much less harmful.
Of course. Stop incentivizing bad stuff. Start incentivizing good stuff. The key thing is to start that transition and not to waste time prolonging the problem.
The Dutch government is actually paying farmers to stop farming. Nitrogen emissions are a big problem in densely populated areas and cattle farming is a known big contributor to that. So, they are paying farmers to get out of the business of converting subsidies into manure. The main point is not to keep them farming but to stop them from doing harmful things. If they can farm other things in a less harmful way; great. But otherwise, things like forests, nature reserves, etc. are also valuable to have. Nothing wrong with subsidizing farmers to create those.
That sounds all simple, but if someone doesn't already grow those crops, they'll need to change equipment. They might need some time to gain knowledge - after all, they've specialized their field.
And "better for society" is... well, not a given. I don't know enough about farming to know what sorts of beneficial crops can be grown where corn/soybeans grow well and I'm not optimistic enough to think we won't just use the "new and improved" crop in much of the same abusive ways that we use the corn crops. I'm going to guess that we could make animal feed for confinement farming out of something that isn't corn We could probably make a sweet syrup out of it, too, and I'm guessing the main benefit to people is that they've made corn syrup the absolute villian and swept away nuance surrounding it, and would welcome the new replacement without much though.
We just need society to be a bit better, I suppose. Quit confinement farming livestock and have better animal welfare laws, for example. Make healthy eating very cheap (and easy with premade food too), have a sugar tax of sorts and food laws to keep sugar out of unexpected places and reduce sugar some other context. Oh, and probably expand public transport exponentially. Feed, corn syrup, and biofuel dependence should drop.
Putting PV on the fields produces a lot more energy per hectare than you get from energy crops and you don't need fertilizer, pesticides or heavy machinery.
This article misses a key point: Ethanol is used to oxygenate the fuel, which reduces carbon monoxide and soot emissions. It replaced MTBE in that role.
It was never intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Producing it requires more energy than it provides, and this was known long before it was introduced. It might be possible to power the production with renewable energy, but that's just extra steps for powering cars with renewables.
> It was never intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It didn't work but it was advertised as part of an effort reduce oil usage and especially to reduce dependency on OPEC following the fuel shock in the 1970s. Growing up in the 1980s, the “brighter future” vision was that someday you'd drive a synthetic-fuel vehicle which used no oil at all.
Actually it was Gray Davis the disgraced ex-governor of CA who got the ball rolling first.
He took the money from the cornfield lobbyists back to CA to study contaimination of the water supply by MTBE from leaking underground gasoline storage tanks.
MTBE is not nearly as toxic as gasoline hydrocarbons, which naturally include hydrocarbons like benzene which is a significant part of crude oil to begin with. Pure MTBE has undergone therapeutic studies also in gram amounts to no ill effect, but it does have a characteristic sweet sharp ether odor which is so much easier to smell in faint amounts than the hydrocarbons.
As such MTBE had actually been detected by residents in some CA water wells where gasoline had possibly been leaking for years and nobody knew until after the Clean Air Act of 1990 required oxygenated gasoline, after which MTBE became the oil companies' choice.
MTBE had been established as an octane booster in the early 1980's but not many oil companies had a chemical unit to make it. They consumed all they made, usually in their premium gasoline. It really did bring back a certain driving pleasure that you only get as your octane approaches 100. Being an oxygenate though you did get fewer miles-per-gallon but not nearly as bad as ethanol. Either way these were cleaner-burning additives to conventional gasoline.
Anyway in 1987 CA company Atlantic Richfield (now part of BP) went commercial with their advanced engineering process, built a big unit and started making more MTBE than they needed themselves. Others followed suit, some startups. Lots of MTBE was made from refinery gases like butylene, combined with purchased methanol and there were constant shipments of MTBE as a commodity of its own. The methanol was made from natural gas as raw material so ultimately the source of all gasoline was still oil & gas wells.
Ethanol didn't have much of a seat at the table, or shall we say a position at the feeding trough. Ethanol was always an alternative EPA oxygenate when the 1990 regulations started requiring oxygenates, however it was not as cost-effective, often requiring subsidies but their lobbyists were fierce out of necessity.
API could be considered asleep at the wheel by comparison, they've always been raking in the bucks, well they have subsidies they don't even need so there is that.
MTBE plants just cranked it up for the occasion.
Eventually gasoline leaking into an aquifer becomes easier to detect than ever.
A comprehensive examination was made of the CA water supply by leading experts and MTBE was found in a number of water wells, but amounting to only a very small fraction of a percent of the water supply and then only an extreme trace amount. The final verdict from the experts was that there really was no significant threat to health from the MTBE overall in California water. This is more of an anti-pollution government than you usually see, and they really tried to find something much more damning but that was it.
Davis mandated Ethanol anyway and banned MTBE in the process. A couple other states ended up following suit, and then the whole US with the nationwide RFS. Ag lobby is like no other.
Davis was recalled for other reasons but that made the way for Schwarzenegger.
Ethanol "helpfully" makes it so people are far less likely to complain about any gasoline leaking into their local water, so less action needs to be taken there, and it supports the corn industry which was Davis' main objective anyway. Smoke & mirrors are well-practiced government tools for obscuring financial shenanigans in plain sight, the same approach can be applied to environmental discrepancy.
Actually, I think your view is the revisionist one. I have lived my entire life in big corn country, and I can tell you that without question, ethanol production was billed as an energy play. Note that the blending standard for ethanol in gasoline requires nearly twice the ethanol required as a direct replacement for MTBE as an oxygenate. This is to guarantee a market for ethanol produced from corn.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but I just watched that video and it supports what the original commenter stated.
The bill introduced many things, some efficiency regulations and investments in new tech were aimed at climate change. When he introduces ethanol, he specifically calls out diversification of energy supplies and reduction of imports and not carbon.
I agree. I can't speak to how this was marketed/pitched at a national level, but in my (midwestern) state it was a huge deal so even as a kid I paid attention to it.
I don't remember much of a climate pitch at all. Everyone immediately pointed out that it cost more energy than it produced. The pitch to the public where I lived at the time was national security (energy independence), and of course the demand it would generate for the local corn industry.
There was probably some greenwashing of it going on, but I certainly don't recall much.
How can that be? Are you including the solar energy? Well, in that case, every process out there has a less than 100% efficiency, so the claim may be true, but also vacuous.
If you don't include the solar energy, then are you saying that all the energy used to make the fertilizers, to plow the fields, then harvest them, then brew the corn and distill it, is less than the energy content of the ethanol produced? I heard this type of argument before, but I find it really difficult to believe. For example the study [1] claims you need 140 gallons of fossil fuel to plant/harvest/process one acre of corn that will produce 328 gallons of ethanol. Ethanol is less energy dense than crude oil (30 MJ/kg vs 42), but overall, 328 gallons of ethanol has about 67% more energy than 140 gallons of crude.
Yes, but wikipedia provides zero evidence for the number. If you follow the link (7), you'll see they only talk about the EROI for oil and gas. The claim about the 1.5:1 EROI for ethanol is unsubstantiated. In any case, my back of the envelope was 1.67:1, which is not that far. Saying that 1.5:1, or even 1.67:1 is pathetic is one thing, saying that you put more energy into getting ethanol than you get out is still quite the wrong.
1. I can't believe 2005 was the rage with biofuels.
2. Many people, AV, boats, powertoys, lawn equipment (it's own pollution there but that's another article) dislike ethanol in gasoline, especially for older cars.
3. Who wins in the end? The corn farmers for the past, 17 years?
4. Why did it take 17 years for this study to be funded and published.
5. If it's economical to move back to "pure gasoline" will we? Just using pure gasoline means we are 24% more efficient on carbon:
"The research, which was funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy, found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion."
Simply incredible, back in 05, it was one a gas shock, gas used to cost $1.25'ish on average and went up quite a bit, $3 or so - https://money.cnn.com/2005/09/01/markets/gas_prices/index.ht... and that was in 2005 dollars. Average car MPG got 14-22mpg.
3$/gallon sounds so cheap to me. I'm paying almost 2.5$/liter. I'm pretty sure that will reduce emissions massively more than any change in fuel composition wherever the fuel comes from.
Europe and the rest of the world is paying something closer to the true cost of using fossil fuels. Although, with compounding climate change, prices are not keeping up. They are, in effect, subsidizing North America and China's addiction to cheap fossil fuels, which are cheap because externalities are not priced in, and are additionally subsidized by NA governments.
The thing is, taxes here are used as a nudge. Meaning, you have decent public transport (subsidized by said taxes) and as a result people are incentivized to commute with said public transport instead of the government having to build 20+ lanes [1] highways.
I never understood why I could never find E85 at any gas station on the west coast. It was once tersely explained to me that it was "bad for the environment". Yet, the Brazilians have been powering vehicles with ethanol since the late 70s.
I have to wonder if everyone who likewise owned a hybrid or EV knew that there was a chance some child in the Congo was mining the cobalt used to manufacture the batteries.
Unfortunately I don't believe we live in a perfect world. Every solution to climate issues just seems to shift the problems elsewhere. Success is declared when the issue disappears over the horizon.
Correct. However, Brazil's gasohol program was developed as a response to shortages produced by the 1973 oil crisis. Sugar cane is plentiful in Brazil, unlike Nebraska; it was not chosen for its carbon properties.
The carbon properties can be a nice side-effect of something selected for other reasons though.
I have no idea about brazilian gasohol, but that’s basically the story of french nukes, they were motivated by geopolitics and economics (the 1974 “messmer plan”, the plan actually led to overbuild as electricity demand did not pick up anywhere as much as expected), but resulted in french electricity being one of the least carbon intensive in europe if not the world, and basically only beaten by countries with ubiquitous hydro.
Central claim: "Their revisions most profoundly reduce predicted land use change (LUC) emissions, for which they propose a central estimate that is roughly half the smallest comparable value they review (figure 1). This LUC estimate represents the midpoint of (a) values retained after filtering the predictions of past studies based on a set of unfounded criteria; and (b) a new estimate they generate for domestic (i.e. U.S.) LUC emissions. The filter the authors apply endorses a singular means of LUC assessment which they assert as the ‘best practice’ despite a recent unacknowledged review (Malins et al 2020 J. Clean. Prod. 258 120716) that shows this method almost certainly underestimates LUC. Moreover, their domestic C intensity estimate surprisingly suggests that cropland expansion newly sequesters soil C, counter to ecological theory and empirical evidence. These issues, among others, prove to grossly underestimate the C intensity of corn-grain ethanol and mischaracterize the state of our science at the risk of perversely affecting policy outcomes."
How many products are subsidized on one and and regulated on the other? Corn is subsidized in production, but then when those subsidies yield health-hindering quantities of cheap sweetener (corn syrup), we attempt to regulate its application and consumption.
Now, we'll subsidize growth again, but then regulate the greenhouse emissions on the other.
It is one thing for government regulation to address externalities (good). It is another to address externalities that government helped create in the first place!
Incredibly, ethanol is subsidized more than once. Corn itself is subsidized and then there's a credit to blenders. And on top of that fuel sellers are required to sell a certain amount.
I don't believe it's the case any more, but for years the US government funded anti-smoking campaigns while simultaneously subsidizing tobacco farming.
from political and management standpoint it's the same thing you as a society wanted regulatory institutions to exist and do their best, so they did. Don't like the result? Good luck fixing it without firing all those people who messed it up in the first place.
That this is a story now is funny to me. I remember reading years ago that corn ethanol EROI was close to 1.0. Given this it is obviously pointless from an energy perspective. All that diesel/energy used growing, processing transporting etc just to make back that same energy...
My theory is that the automotive industry is complicit in not fighting back against ethanol mandates because they know that it’s ultimately good for business if their cars last 10 years instead of 15.
Lots of short term vs long term issues here. Some applications like air travel really rely on hydrocarbons, with no practical substitutes available. Refining technology to produce fuel by capturing atmospheric carbon is helpful even if current technology is less efficient than fossil fuels. Surely practical biofuel is more achievable than practical fusion in short/medium term.
The octane rating of fuels in the USA is fairly standardized, a majority of gasoline cars require a minimum of 87 octane (on the US measurement system) and some even require or recommend a minimum of 91 octane. These requirements are usually for emissions and warranty/reliability reasons, but in some higher performance vehicles (which are a small subset) it's also for performance reasons. Using ethanol in a gasoline blend boosts the octane, so if ethanol is removed then something else will need to be used in its place. You can't just substitute gasoline in place of the ethanol with no other changes.
Ethanol has many downsides, especially with attracting water into the fuel, but it does have its benefits, too.
The octane rating of your fuel does not in any way affect the emissions of your car[0]. You should use whatever octane-rated fuel that your manufacturer recommends. Using a higher-rated fuel will not confer any additional benefits whatsoever onto your car.
The worst thing about ethanol is the huge hit to gas mileage. Ten years ago I used to happen upon gas stations that didn’t use ethanol and I’d see my mileage jump!
I wonder if the epa mpg ratings tests use ethanol free gas?
I hate to be that guy, but the only reliable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to drastically reduce emissions. Switching to biofuel doesn't fix climate change because biofuel is still terrible. Switching to electric cars doesn't fix climate change because electric power is still terrible (not to mention all the damage from lithium mining, manufacturing and battery replacements).
The only solution is to make neighborhoods more walkable, reduce the need for frequent travel through mixed use zoning and invest in public transit (trains and trams, buses if you can't avoid road traffic completely) so more travel happens in high density vehicles rather than cars.
But that basically means public spending for public services rather than having companies sell more products to consumers and that's just too much like communism to be a legitimate answer because you don't want people to reconsider whether some aspects of socialism might actually be good.
EDIT: Since HN won't let me reply, I'll just pre-empt any further replies by pointing out that the problem with "solutions" like renewables, carbon capture and electric vehicles is that while they sound great in a spreadsheet they ignore externalities, overhead and scale: yes, if we could wave a magic wand and convert all existing cars into electric and backfill the increases energy demand by turning all the now unused infrastructure into wind mills and solar panels and somehow fix the energy storage problem, the situation would undeniably be better than it is now. But that's not how we get there and even that situation would be unsustainable as long as we follow a growth mindset and promote individual transportation as a consumer product rather than addressing infrastructure as a social issue.
I don't think HN is ready to acknowledge that the biggest carbon emission savings in the US don't come from carbon capture tech magic but from offloading the more emission heavy parts of the production chain behind the curtain into third world countries that don't end up on the spreadsheet. We're not going to solve climate change by stuffing all our toys into the broom closet with hopes that the regulators can't see the mess we made. We need to actually clean up the mess and stop adding to it. We can't fix a resource problem by continuing to expend an increasing amount of resources. It's called "reduce, reuse, recycle" because those are the things you can do in decreasing order of effectiveness. Carbon capture is just recycling. Going electric is not even that.
By reducing the size and weight of the cars we use gives more than relying on magic new innovations. We use 2000kg cars to drive around a < 100kg person.
If we with the snap of a finger replaced all the coal and oil and gas we use with wind and solar power plants I'm not convinced that would be much better. Not maybe worse, but not better.
Wind mills everywhere, solar plants covering huge areas of land and a lot of metals and energy needed to construct all that. It just moves the problem around.
A small gasoline/diesel car is better than a big electric car.
Or why not a small electric car such as this Citroen Ami or Zbee from Clean Motion:
Modern safety requirements on vehicle essentially put a lower bound on vehicle weight. There are requirements both for the passengers of the vehicle and pedestrians.
For example, you can't even make a car without a rear view camera now and sell it in the US. Why? Is looking out the back window really that challenging?
This doesn't make sense. More and more electric is being generated renewably. It's not some far fetched pie in the sky thing either - I fully charge my car using solar cells on the top of my roof. My daily driving is carbon neutral.
Lithium mining isn't great for the environment, but it's certainly much less of a problem than co2 emmisions.
I've seen thousands of papers regarding extreme climate change from CO2 emissions. I've seen nothing that indicates lithium mining does anything but local damage. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
The problem with this kind of comment is that it's hard to know what direction you are travelling.
If you used to deny climate change was happening, then denied it was a problem, then denied it was human caused, then denied that there was any alternative and so on, then your opinion now is still some kind of progress towards objective reality.
If on the other hand, you started with the consensus reality of qualified scientists and have now regressed into this opinion which seems just like negative energy directed at necessary change then that's a bad thing.
The former seems more likely though, or maybe that's just the optimist in me.
i always thought that ethanol from corn is just a primer, just to jump start the ethanol usage in ICE while the efficient production tech - like ethanol/methanol
from biomass - bamboo grows really fast - gets developed. We didn't get that tech and instead got EVs. Not bad. For the synthetic fuel which will still be needed by the hard-to-electrify industries like for example aviation - SpaceX anyway will have to develop an efficient way to produce synthetic methane, so that will come in time.
Way back when I read The Hydrogen Economy, the author claimed something like 4 calorie investment for every calorie we pulled out of the ground for ethanol. I think is more a criticism of the Nixon era green revolution, when large scale chemical fertilizers came into use, since these are largely petro chemical products.
What about Brazilian cane-based ethanol? The sugar conversion efficiency, I'm not certain this is the right term, is significantly higher than that of corn or beet but logistics deficiencies in the country may make it more expensive and less green.
The term you are looking for is Energy Return On Investment (EROI). This is the amount of useful energy you get divided by the amount of energy you spent to get it. The figure I've seen most often for ethanol from corn is 1.25 (though some people argue its less than one), which is not very good. When made from Brazilian sugarcane its 8 which is amazing.
Something Conservatives and Democrats can agree on: Ethanol sucks. There is a rare moment where both sides could see past their differences to accomplish something here.
* It makes muscle cars slower
* It is terrible for engines, no matter what the lobbyists tell you
* Ethanol plants smell
* Corn uses a ton of ground water, depleting the Ogallala Aquifer and destroying habitats
* Using diesel fuel to harvest corn which makes ethanol... is just stupid. You'd be better off just burning the diesel in cars.
* The EPA was successfully paid off to implement Ethanol. They should be held accontable.
I think the only sharp resistance is going to be Nebraska, but generally, everyone hates it and it needs to go.
Well yes. Because more energy is consumed (EROEI) with corn - all the diesel, pesticides, fertilizer, etc. inputs - than with simply using the gasoline/petroleum.
The exact same analysis is true for electricity generated from a nat gas fired generator vs. simply using the nat gas directly, especially for heating. This is why "banning nat gas for new construction" is so ignorant and stupid!
- Ethanol effectively helps spread carbon emissions across a larger area. It significantly cleans the air around large cities, I guess at the expense of more emissions in rural areas? But then again I'd guess most of those rural areas are not super concerned about carbon emissions and are very supportive of corn subsidies.
- Of the three goals of adding ethanol to gasoline, it seems like 2 of 3 of them are completely successful:
"The policy was intended to reduce emissions, support farmers, and cut U.S. dependence on energy imports."
I am pretty sure that carbon emissions are only a global concern (global warming), not a local concern, while the reverse is true for other pollutants like particulate and nitrogen oxides.
How does ethanol clean the air around large cities? It's still a hydrocarbon fuel and still requires a catalytic converter to lower the production of harmful byproducts from burning it inside of a cars cylinder.
You can have high octane gasoline without lead. Suggesting that ethanol replaced lead is facetious.
It's also an absurd notion. Leaded gasoline to this still poisons the air of all 50 states in the form of 100LL avgas. Suggesting that a wasteful farming practice is saving us from lead is like shooting one foot off and the exclaiming that you "saved" your other foot.
> You can have high octane gasoline without lead. Suggesting that ethanol replaced lead is facetious.
I'm no expert on fuel mixtures but currently it does even if there better/worse alternatives.
> Suggesting that a wasteful farming practice is saving us from lead is like shooting one foot off and the exclaiming that you "saved" your other foot.
You are making an nonsensical generalization from a single study. This isn't black on white. Not all ethanol are corn ethanol and this is an industry that sees operational improvement year by year.
The rest, which would be usage for e.g. corn bread or other staples of North American cuisine, is of course fine. Nothing wrong with e.g. organically farmed corn. It's a crop that does well under a wide range of circumstances and popular for that reason all over the world. And as a grain, it's an important part of food production.
So, why does this exist? Very simple, federal subsidies to states that have become very dependent on that. Kill the subsidies and that whole industry slowly dies. That would be a good thing. Maybe repurpose the subsidies to have those farmers do something that actually is more productive and less harmful.