Set America Free Coalition member Robert Zubrin writes in the New Atlantis:
n the world markets, the cost of a barrel of oil is, at this writing, over $120. In the United States, a gallon of gasoline now costs, on average, roughly $3.50. Even when adjusted for inflation, both of those figures are now higher than they have ever been—higher than during the 1973 oil embargo, higher than during any subsequent peak. And yet, bizarrely, instead of focusing their attention on the staggering cost of oil and its ruinous implications for global growth and economic wellbeing, American policymakers and energy analysts have begun to decry a different fuel—one that holds the key to ending our dependency on expensive oil purchased from countries with interests inimical to our own.
Read the whole thing.
Set America Free chair Anne Korin writes in the Miami Herald:
the best way to address the oil price increases is to steer a course toward stripping OPEC of its hold on the world’s unmentionables by stripping oil of its strategic value, which derives from its domination of the transportation sector (contrary to beliefs mysteriously held by many politicians, we hardly use any oil to generate electricity these days).
Doing so requires choice at the pump. It costs less than $100 per car to make this choice possible. Flex fuel vehicles, that can run on any combination of gasoline and a variety of alcohol fuels (not just ethanol, and not just agriculture based) look and perform exactly like gasoline only cars, with the added benefit of letting drivers choose what to fill up with. Every new car sold in America should be a flex fuel vehicle.
What would be the impact of this?
More than 90 percent of new cars sold in Brazil this year are flex fuel, driving fuel competition at the pump to the point where the Brazilian oil industry has had to keep gasoline prices sufficiently low to compete with ethanol and not lose even more market share. So low that it actually just received a government subsidy to do so. Competition in Brazil is working so well that a big Brazillian sugar and ethanol firm just bought out the distribution assets of Exxon in Brazil. Think of it: in Brazil, farmers took on oil, and won. Don’t Americans deserve to have a choice too?
She’ll be testifying in front of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the impact of increasing oil prices on national security on May 22.
Set America Free Coalition member Cliff May fires a strong salvo in the direction of those that haven’t learned that teaching someone to fish so he can feed himself is always better than giving him a fish:
It’s become the conventional wisdom and William Tucker, writing in The Weekly Standard, expressed it most eloquently: “Right now, we’re trying to run our cars on corn ethanol instead of gasoline. As a result, we suddenly find ourselves taking food out of the mouths of children in developing nations. That may sound harsh, but it also happens to be true.”
Give this a little thought: The suggestion is that American farmers are growing corn primarily to feed children in the Third World. And since people in these nations lack not only food but also money, it assumes that American taxpayers must buy this corn for them and pay to ship it across the ocean to them.
In other words, implicit in this argument is the notion that developing nations are not developing at all, and never will be. Instead, they must depend on Americans for their basic subsistence. Is this what we believe? Is this the model — the Third World as permanent American ward and welfare recipient — that we accept and envision for the future?
Cliff discuss the difference between relief (give a fish) and development (teach to fish) and notes:
the moment you send in free food, you collapse local prices and pauperize those farmers who have managed to raise crops and who want to sell them, make money, improve their farms and increase their production in the future.
In Africa, where I once served as a New York Times bureau chief, people are not poor because they are unwilling to work hard or because they can’t master agricultural skills, or because the land lacks the potential to produce bounty. They are poor largely because they are oppressed by governments that range from the inept to the tyrannical.
He discusses the real drivers of famine and food price increase, that have nothing to do with biofuels, and explains how biofuels can help lift the world’s poor from poverty:
[developing countries] could use indigenous crops, crop residue, weeds and, possibly, bio-engineered plants developed specifically to produce fuels for their own use and to sell overseas. Instead of importing American food as charity, they could be importing American farm equipment at market prices, the better to both feed themselves and produce additional products for export.
But the regimes that profit most from high oil prices want none of this. Most of all, they want no competition. So they are selling the notion that alternative fuels are impractical or environmentally disastrous or “take food out of the mouths of children in developing nations.”
Read the whole thing, for it is good.
Set America Free Coalition member Bud McFarlane writes in the Wall Street Journal:
By far the greatest contributor to higher food prices has been the run-up in the price of oil, which impacts every stage of food production.
The same sustained growth in China’s and India’s economies that is contributing to the rise of food prices is matched by a corresponding increased demand for oil, which promises to keep oil prices high for the foreseeable future. Given the tightness of supply – with very little excess production capacity anywhere in the world – if oil flows from the Persian Gulf were disrupted (as al Qaeda has promised, and which could easily happen), we would see oil at more than $200 per barrel overnight. And it would stay at that level until the damage is repaired – a period of up to a year – during which time the global economy would likely fall into deep depression.
He calls for action on four fronts:
- Accelerate the introduction of second-generation biofuels (e.g. cellulosic ethanol and methanol) which don’t rely on any food crop as feedstock, and should not require any government subsidy.
- Establish an Open Fuel Standard. That is, require that any automobile sold in the U.S. be a flexible fuel vehicle capable of burning gasoline, methanol, ethanol or any combination of the three – a feature that costs just $100 per vehicle.
- Accelerate the production of plug-in hybrid-electric cars and trucks.
- Introduce the use of lighter, stronger carbon composite materials, as Boeing is doing in the new 787 Dreamliner aircraft, into the production of cars and trucks. A Pentagon study a few years ago concluded that this step alone could reduce our oil imports by 48%.
The most important of these measures is the enactment of an Open Fuel Standard, so that the consumer has a choice at the fuel pump. Unfortunately, without a predictable market, such as would be provided by mandatory flexible-fuel cars and trucks, there is a strong disincentive among investors to risk the capital needed for second-generation alternative fuels like cellulosic ethanol to take off. But without such a mandate, we are keeping ourselves tied exclusively to oil, with all the risks that involves.
Some say that these mandates are contrary to free-market principles. But one could say the same thing about seat belts, air-bags and even the FM radios mandated during the Cold War to assure the government’s ability to broadcast nuclear alerts.
No one argues seriously that these things have not been in our interest. And just imagine how valuable it would be to reduce the $460 billion we will spend on foreign oil this year, or the threat to our economy that its disruption would represent.
Set America Free Coalition members Gal Luft and Robert Zubrin take on the anti-biofuel hysterics in a Chicago Tribune oped:
Here are the facts. In the last five years, despite the nearly threefold growth of the corn ethanol industry (or actually because of it), the U.S. corn crop grew by 35 percent, the production of distillers grain (a high-value animal feed made from the protein saved from the corn used for ethanol) quadrupled and the net corn food and feed product of the U.S. increased 26 percent.
Contrary to claims that farmers have cut other crops to grow more corn, U.S. soybean plantings this year are expected to be up 18 percent and wheat plantings up 6 percent. U.S. farm exports are up 23 percent.
America is clearly doing its share in feeding the world.
Read the whole thing.
Robert Zubrin writes a scathing critique Robert Bryce’s recent anti-energy independence book “Gusher of Lies”, including this nugget:
[Bryce's] estimate of the amount of water used to produce corn ethanol — are off by a factor of over 400. (He says 885 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol; the actual industry figure is 2, since corn used for ethanol is not irrigated.)
Now that’s a pretty big boo-boo, but hey, the OPEC apologist Defenders of the Status Quo will try anything.
Venezuelan petrotyrant Hugo Chavez has renewed his denunciations of biofuels. According to an Associated Press story dated April 26, 2008:
“Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says a U.S. push to boost ethanol production during a world food crisis is a ‘crime.’
The socialist leader says he’s concerned that so much U.S.-produced corn could be used to make biofuel, instead of feeding the world’s poor.
Chavez says the corn needed to fill an average car with ethanol would be enough to feed seven people for a year.”
Actually, since a bushel of corn yields 2.8 gallons of ethanol, the corn needed to fill a 20 gallon SUV tank is 7 bushels, which at the current market price of $5/bushel, costs a total of $35. According to Mr. Chavez, then, the cost of feeding one person for a year is $5. With oil hitting $120/barrel, Mr. Chavez’s government this year will receive about $88 billion in revenues taxed from the rest of the global economy, while the OPEC governments collectively will tax the world to the tune of $1400 billion.
(Omitted from Chavez’s analysis is the fact that the ethanol program has actually stimulated corn production so much that, after the part used for ethanol is taken away, the net US corn harvest available for food and feed is up 34% since 2002. Furthermore, contrary to claims in many articles, this has not been done at the expense of soy or wheat production. In fact, U.S. soy plantings this year are expected to be up 18% to a near record of 75 million acres, wheat plantings are up 6%, and overall, US farm exports are up 23%. Much more can be produced as demand requires, since of 800 million acres of US farmland, only 280 million are actually being farmed. This is why – $5 per person per year feeding price aside –  the entire Malthusian conceit underlying Chavez’s fuel vs. food argument is nonsense.)
Chavez’s remarks reinforce those made by the Saudi Arabian oil minister in a speech made in Paris April 8, wherein he expressed his deep concern that biofuels could contribute to global warming. Chavez and the Saudi’s negative assessments of biofuels were also strongly supported by arch Malthusian Lester Brown in an op ed in the Washington Post April 22.
The fundamental unity of the Islamist, the petrotyrant, and the Malthusian positions was made clear by pro-OPEC propagandist Robert Bryce, in a debate with me that aired on the Mike Medved Show April 21. (Which can be heard by clicking here.)
So apparently we should all be thankful to OPEC, which by taxing the world economy into a recession, is doing so much to curtail uncontrolled human aspirations, while concentrating power in the hands of those who would eliminate all freedom forever.Â
Robert Zubrin, author “Energy Victory: Winning the war on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil,” www.energyvictory.net
UPDATE:
A reader writes in with an example of how innumerate Chavez’ statement is:
“If the $88 billion/year Venezuelan oil revenue figure is correct (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), then Hugo Chavez can singlehandedly end global hunger – $88 billion/$5 per person = 17.6 billion people that can be fed on Venezuelan oil revenue alone. What a humanitarian gesture that would be! And as there are only 6.6 billion people on Earth, he can still pocket $55 billion dollars for his own personal needs…”
The Financial Times report:
Biofuel production is critical to meeting current and future fuel demand in spite of its possible role in driving up food prices, the west’s energy watchdog has warned.[...] the International Energy Agency said that the crop-based fuel was vital to meeting current and future demand.
Biofuels already make up about 50 per cent of the extra fuel coming to the market from sources outside the Opec’s oil cartel this year. This explains why fears of a retreat from biofuels this week helped drive oil prices to record levels.
So it’s very clear why the Defenders of the Status Quo are bashing ethanol and blaming it for food price increases — any decrease in ethanol production will drive an increase in oil price.
William Ramsey, deputy executive director at the IEA, said: “If we didn’t have those barrels, I am not sure where we would be getting those half a million barrels [from],” adding that Opec has said it would not raise supply. [...]
the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation says biofuels are not a major cause of the food crisis. The FAO estimates biofuels account for 10 per cent of the food price spike.