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DINA CAPPIELLO
Associated Press

CORYDON, Iowa (AP) -- The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.

Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country "stronger, cleaner and more secure."

But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.

As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.

Five million acres of land set aside for conservation -- more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined -- have vanished on Obama's watch.

Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.

Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can't survive.

The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.

Farmers planted 15 million more acres of corn last year than before the ethanol boom, and the effects are visible in places like south central Iowa.

The hilly, once-grassy landscape is made up of fragile soil that, unlike the earth in the rest of the state, is poorly suited for corn. Nevertheless, it has yielded to America's demand for it.

"They're raping the land," said Bill Alley, a member of the board of supervisors in Wayne County, which now bears little resemblance to the rolling cow pastures shown in postcards sold at a Corydon pharmacy.

All energy comes at a cost. The environmental consequences of drilling for oil and natural gas are well documented and severe. But in the president's push to reduce greenhouse gases and curtail global warming, his administration has allowed so-called green energy to do not-so-green things.

In some cases, such as its decision to allow wind farms to kill eagles, the administration accepts environmental costs because they pale in comparison to the havoc it believes global warming could ultimately cause.

Ethanol is different.

The government's predictions of the benefits have proven so inaccurate that independent scientists question whether it will ever achieve its central environmental goal: reducing greenhouse gases. That makes the hidden costs even more significant.

"This is an ecological disaster," said Craig Cox with the Environmental Working Group, a natural ally of the president that, like others, now finds itself at odds with the White House.

But it's a cost the administration is willing to accept. It believes supporting corn ethanol is the best way to encourage the development of biofuels that will someday be cleaner and greener than today's. Pulling the plug on corn ethanol, officials fear, might mean killing any hope of these next-generation fuels.

"That is what you give up if you don't recognize that renewable fuels have some place here," EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said in a recent interview with AP. "All renewable fuels are not corn ethanol."

Still, corn supplies the overwhelming majority of ethanol in the United States, and the administration is loath to discuss the environmental consequences.

"It just caught us completely off guard," said Doug Davenport, a Department of Agriculture official who encourages southern Iowa farmers to use conservation practices on their land. Despite those efforts, Davenport said he was surprised at how much fragile, erodible land was turned into corn fields.

Shortly after Davenport spoke to The Associated Press, he got an email ordering him to stop talking.

"We just want to have a consistent message on the topic," an Agriculture Department spokesman in Iowa said.

That consistent message was laid out by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who spoke to ethanol lobbyists on Capitol Hill recently and said ethanol was good for business.

"We are committed to this industry because we understand its benefits," he said. "We understand it's about farm income. It's about stabilizing and maintaining farm income which is at record levels."

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Originally posted by Niki2:
"Ethanol from corn is a moronic,foolish idea. I don't care who promotes it, Bush, Obama, Cruz... paying off voters so they can get govt $ to grow corn is simply bad policy , every way you look at it."

Damn, there we go, agreeing again. And yup, Obama is as stupid about it as Bush was or any other politician WILL BE.

However, it just might be SLIGHTLY more honest about it if it weren't entitled "Obama's green power push", as it began with Bush...y'know?? Note "President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year..." Yeah, Geezer, we know you're non-partisan. Bullshit.

THEY WERE BOTH WRONG. As is ANYONE who pushes ethanol...we need better ways, not "it's YOUR fault!"

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Originally posted by Niki2:
ETA: "You get to cut your expensive product with something cheap, sell it at the same price, and magically blame government for your prices while you rape the customer." They are SUBSIDIZED to do that, too, Kiki, as you know. Double your profit, double your rape...

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JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: Americans last year bought almost nine billion fewer gallons of gasoline than they did just five years earlier. More efficient cars get part of the credit. In 2007, Congress boosted something called the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. It requires a set number of gallons of ethanol be mixed with gasoline, and it increases every year, even if demand for gas declines. These two factors have left the oil industry with a smaller share of what goes in your gas tank.

The industry wants the federal government to lower next year's ethanol mandate. And Bob Greco, with the American Petroleum Institute, says his industry wants more than just an annual waiver.

BOB GRECO: We can't run our industry, our refineries, on a year-to-year basis so we will need long-term certainty about this. So that's why we are urging Congress to revisit this and fix the RFS once and for all. Preferably repeal it.

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In win for Big Oil, U.S. proposes biofuel mandate cut

BY TIMOTHY GARDNER

WASHINGTON Fri Nov 15, 2013 5:01pm EST

(Reuters) - The Obama administration proposed on Friday slashing federal requirements for U.S. biofuel use in 2014, bowing to pressure from the petroleum industry and attempting to prevent a projected fuel crunch next year.

The move was seen as a clear win for oil refiners and a loss for biofuel producers. It followed a prolonged lobbying blitz on both sides of the issue.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/15/us-usa-ethanol-idUSBRE9AE12F
20131115

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Your logic is imperfect: When people are using less gas, of COURSE the oil industry wants to make the percentage of their product higher!

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
They invested A LOT in these projects, when it looked like oil consumption was going to go up indefinitely. Now they HAVE TO make them pay off. The money they save by selling 10% ethanol at gasoline prices isn't going to recoup those projects. They HAVE TO re-establish control of the market to sell their product exclusively. Once they have control of the market they can then raise the price and milk those projects indefinitely.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Big Oil never LIKED ethanol and fought hard against it, overtly and covertly. Ethanol happened despite their efforts, and they got bought off, to a degree, but now that the negatives have grown, of course they'll jump on the band wagon.

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Originally posted by Niki2:

I agree with all three of you, even, yes, Rap.

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