Dubner and Levitt recently wrote a column discussing the unintended consequences of legislation intended to help the neediest segments of society.
Few movements for change have met with as many unintended consequences as the efforts, both in the public and private sector, to combat global warming. Take biofuels (another topic Dubner has addressed here and here). Hailed as the darling of the alternative fuel market, this new energy source, led by the most popular form, ethanol, was declared the solution to burning fossil fuels in 2006. It has since been embraced by companies from luxury car makers to airlines. To meet the growing demand for ethanol, U.S. farmers and agribusiness firms invested millions in growing corn (a move that has already come back to bite them financially). Biofuels have become such a staple of international plans to combat climate change, reports the Times, that governments are even legislating and subsidizing their use:
The EU has mandated that countries use 5.75 percent biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. In the United States, a proposed energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. To reach these goals, biofuels production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents.
Fantastic! A worldwide movement to cut emissions and halt what a growing number of scientists call a massive global crisis. Except it all hit a roadblock last week, when two newly-released studies reported that the net environmental effect of using biofuels may be even more harmful than burning the gasoline they were created to replace.
The first study, led by Princeton University environment and economics researcher Timothy Searchinger, found that replacing fossil fuels with corn-based ethanol could actually double greenhouse gas emissions for the next thirty years. As Scientific American writer David Biello explains it:
“Prior analyses made an accounting error,” says [Searchinger]. … “There is a huge imbalance between the carbon lost by plowing up a hectare [2.47 acres] of forest or grassland from the benefit you get from biofuels.”
Growing plants store carbon in their roots, shoots and leaves. As a result, the world’s plants and the soil in which they grow contain nearly three times as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. …
By turning crops such as corn, sugarcane and palm oil into biofuels – whether ethanol, biodiesel, or something else – proponents hope to reap the benefits of the carbon soaked up as the plants grow to offset the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted when the resulting fuel is burned. But whether biofuels emit more or less CO2 than gasoline depends on what the land they were grown on was previously used for…
The second study, led by Joseph Fargione, a scientist at the Nature Conservancy, found that by switching to biofuels, we could essentially be worsening climate change for the next 93 years, in that “[t]he clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land,” according to the Times. Not to mention the fact that, by switching to growing corn, U.S. farmers have turned away from growing other crops, such as soy. As a result, Fargione told the Times, “‘Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world’s soybeans – and they’re deforesting the Amazon to do it.’”
So in a matter of days, biofuels go from a celebrated fossil fuels alternative to a rainforest-killing disaster, with scientists already calling for government reform on biofuel policies. If anything, this provides a window into how little we actually know about this issue, and the wide lengths left to go in reaching a viable solution.
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I take exception to the comment “a growing number of scientists call a massive global crisis” actually it seems to me that that the recent growth in opinion goes the other way. Say if you will that “a majority of scientist” or “a large number of scientists” or “a large group of true believers” call a massive global crisis, but I really don’t think the number of scientists with this belief system has grown significantly.
The biodiesel that I use in my VW Jetta is produced by a company called Blue Sun. They produce their oil from mustard seed plants that are grown without irrigation in Colorado and Western Nebraska. This is an off-season crop for lands that are being farmed anyway, but were previously left dormant for this part of the year. The diesel returns 220% of the energy that is used to produce it.
Unintended consequences are serious — especially the tropical rainforest that is being leveled to grow palm oil for biodiesel, but it is silly to criticize the whole effort for its failings when the “do nothing” alternative is unacceptable. Dig a little and you’ll find any number of companies who offer a good example for how to avoid these unintended consequences.
This is a big argument for a free-market solution. Slap a giant tax on all carbon emissions (including gasoline), rebate 100% of the revenue on a per-capita basis, and let good-old-fashioned innovation and economic processes sort it out. Then we don’t have to worry about the details of ethanol policy and how it relates to agriculture or the rest of the economy.
This is exactly what happens when a politically motivated solution is picked out instead of letting market competition work.
And Lafsky curves … mmmmmm… .
Too often, people think ethanol=corn. Comment #7 recognized this isn’t true. I live in a very rural area that understands corn-based ethanol isn’t the final solution. There are problems with water supply, increase fertilizer usage, and wetland draining. People here can see that corn-based ethanol is a bridge to a better biofuels: cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel, etc.
For example, cellulosic ethanol can be produced from native prairie grasses which reduce topsoil erosion, act as filters to protect the water supply, and make wetland acerage useful without requiring it to be plowed for corn/soybeans. There is also more “energy” per acre from native prarie grasses so fewer acres are required to produce more gallons of fuel.
I think my main point is that poeple who already understand the limitations of corn-based ethanol are already looking toward the next thing. I don’t think anyone truly informed about biofuels believes corn-based ethanol is anything more than a temporary stop-gap solution on the way to something better.
Harlan, how is slapping a giant tax on all carbon emissions and redistributing 100% of that a “free-market” solution?
It sounds like an “entirely government controlled-market” solution to me.
The free-market solution in my estimation would be to eliminate tariffs and let cheap ethanol from Brazil compete with gas and eliminate farm subsidies at home so that farmers will grow what the market wants (food for the world to eat).
Well tmitsss, the number of scientists who believe global warming is massive global crisis can’t really grow, since pretty much all of them have signed on.
And those who study planetary lifecycles will tell you that Earth will cool and heat cyclically over thousands of years, all on it’s own. Whether or not mankind has contributed to the lastest warming trend is absolutely moot. We’ll have to deal with this change, regardless of who/what caused it. Oh, and stopping/reversing it obviously isn’t in the cards, although we might achieve some miniscule level of retardation through our greenhouse gas reduction efforts. I hope we don’t spend all our efforts on the wrong thing.
I agree with 15. No matter who or what caused global warming, I am happy it has the general public focused on environmental concerns such as pollution and recycling.
If we look at a coal fired power plant and realize it is spewing tons of carbon in the air, then we will also realize it’s spewing tons of mercury into the air as well. Neither of which are good for us.