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Are we seeing a new phase for environmental critiques?

Posted: June 28, 2010 at 11:06 AM CST

The New York Times hasn’t exactly been a friend of ethanol in the past. On June 24 a special New York Times report written by Erica Gies was published online titled: “As Ethanol Booms, Critics Warn of Environmental Effect.”

The article returns to the core concerns about increased corn for ethanol—the impact of fertilizers and pesticides on the environment and water use, with much of the story covering concerns about water. It presents several points of view and is generally accurate, as best I can tell without researching the details.

What strikes me is that a discussion on the debate over indirect land use change theory doesn’t appear. That may be because it is so complex that an article for a general audience would require most of it to be devoted to explaining what that means and the basic arguments, pro and con. It makes me wonder if the indirect land use theory has been successfully discredited. Certainly when the U.S. EPA revised its indirect land use modeling using more recent data and properly crediting coproducts and other offsetting effects, corn ethanol’s greenhouse gas reduction score improved. Two of the experts on the California Air Resource Board’s committee have released their reports revisiting the models being done as part of CARB’s review of the indirect land use science with similar results—the initial modeling overstated indirect land use impacts.

The author also doesn’t tackle the “global rebound effect” that has been lately posed by biofuels critics as an argument for not implementing a renewable fuels standard. In essence, the global rebound effect says an increase in the use of renewable fuels would reduce consumption of petroleum-based fuel, thus increasing supply with a corresponding drop in price. The drop in oil prices would stimulate more use with the end result that a global rebound would increase oil use. Therefore, nothing should be done to stimulate alternative fuel use. While that had some guffawing and ridiculing such logic, it isn’t far removed from the indirect land use argument which had/has considerable legs.

The New York Times article is still rather new. So far, it doesn’t seem like the report is bouncing wildly around the internet as such reports have in the past. I don’t think that means the issue is going away, but I do think it means we are seeing a new phase in the ongoing discussion.

What’s your take on recent events/reports?

-Susanne Retka Schill