Lobbyists Use Oil Spill to Push for More Ethanol Production; Greens Groan

Leave it to King Corn to try to use a national tragedy for its own gain. Ethanol advocates are highlighting the Gulf oil spill to garner more government support for corn-based ethanol. As the New York Times reports, Growth Energy recently littered D.C. Metro stations with ads reading "No beaches have been closed due to ethanol spills." And while that may be true, ethanol's had plenty of detrimental effects on beaches, crop land, the atmosphere, and basically every other facet of the environment, too.

Critics already question whether burning ethanol actually emits fewer carbon emissions than traditional oil. Other reports show that when looking at ethanol's entire life cycle (from growing corn to burning fuel), the stuff racks up a pretty ginormous carbon footprint.

But some of the worst environmental degradation comes from producing ethanol's main feedstock, corn. The U.S. currently makes about 12.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year, which means that about one-third of the nation's corn crop is diverted to fuel. As Change.org blogger Kristen Ridley indicated in her "Down With King Corn" series, the country currently has a surplus of corn, so maybe that diversion isn't such a big deal at the moment. But more ethanol production would mean transferring more corn from food to fuel production, potentially driving up food prices.

Additionally, corn is an extremely resource-dependent crop, taking a ton of water, pesticides, and fertilizers to produce. According to the NYT, a 2007 report from the National Academy of Sciences figured out that it takes about 780 gallons of irrigation water to produce a single gallon of corn-based ethanol in Nebraska. And this is coming at a time when the world's already experiencing water shortages, with more expected as climate change rolls forward.

Corn also uses more chemical pesticides and fertilizers than any other potential biofuel feedstock, including soybeans. That agricultural run-off inevitably makes its way into oceans and groundwater, creating massive dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and along Atlantic coasts. Ethanol spills may not close beaches, but producing the fuel's feedstock certainly kills aquatic life.

The process of turning that corn into ethanol further adds to the substance's huge environmental toll. A modern ethanol plant uses about three gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. Older plants boast even worse water-efficiency statistics. Massive carbon emissions, intense use of chemicals, and water waste—will someone please explain to me how this fuel is so much better than oil?

What really gets to me about ethanol, too, is that it doesn't have to be made from corn. Scientists know how to create fuel from all kinds of substances that don't compete with food stocks and don't require so many resources. Switchgrass, wood, non-edible plant parts, algae, used cooking oil, and spent coffee grounds can all serve as biofuel feedstocks.

It's clear that with so many biofuel options available, we don't need to be advocating for more environmentally degrading, corn-based ethanol. America also needs to seriously cut back its fuel use—we can't just grow our way out of the real problem: an over-reliance on fossil fuels. Let's use the Gulf tragedy as a lesson that we need to break our addiction to oil, not replace it with another harmful fuel.

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