Highwater Ethanol plant
Joe Romm at Climate Progress writes
Is corn ethanol breaking the law?
Corn ethanol may be breaking the law, according to a study from last month, “Cropland Expansion Outpaces Agricultural and Biofuel Policies in the United States.”
It appears that corn was caught yellow-handed by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in a plot with other crops like soy to replace “millions of acres of grasslands.” But scientists named corn the ring-leader: “Corn was the most common crop planted directly on new land.”
I know you’re wondering, “since when is it illegal to replace carbon-storing grassland with the Walter White of Biofuels?” Answer: Since the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), “which requires blending of gasoline with biofuels that are supposed to be grown only on pre-existing cropland, in order to minimize land-use change and its associated greenhouse gas emissions,” as the UWM news release explains. [...]
This new UWM study is the “first comprehensive analysis of land-use change across the U.S. between 2008 and 2012.” University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers “tracked crop-specific expansion pathways across the conterminous US and identified the types, amount, and locations of all land converted to and from cropland” during that time.
Scientists learned that crops “expanded onto 7 million acres of new land,” during those four years and replaced “millions of acres of grasslands.” Half of that was new soy and corn, which was increasingly used to make biofuels between 2008 and 2012 to meet U.S. government mandates, which included a minimum target of over 12 billion gallons of biofuels in 2010.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on the day after this date in 2003—
Bush's $1 million 'political stunt':
Rep. Henry Waxman, one of those rare congressional Democrats with a pulse (along with Sen. Byrd), is demanding the administration account for the costs of Bush's stunt landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The costs reportedly top $1 million, but for me, the biggest cost of the stunt was this:
The Democrats issued a news release headed 'shameless' in large red type that cited the 'nerve required to delay the return of 4,000 sailors to their families after 10 months at sea in order to stage (a) photo-op.' |
That's right—our troops, eager to see their families after a 10 month assignment, were required to spend an extra day at sea in order to accommodate Bush's campaign appearance.
The Navy's excuse? The ship made good time on its return trip and the sailors still got into port as previously scheduled, but I'm sure the sailors and their families would've loved to have seen each other a day sooner.
Too bad their needs were subjugated for Bush's reelection campaign needs.
Tweet of the Day
Government should be small enough to drown in a bathtub but cruel enough to make life miserable for people that annoy me. - GOP platform
— @Rschooley
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin rounds up top horse race headlines, then notes a very interesting clash of competing theories of "political machines," before moving on to today's much-discussed and masterful trashing of terrible Baltimore takes from both the "left" and right. Jobless numbers remain near long-time lows. Obamacare kind of works, to the tune of 17 million more people insured. Hillary sets an "immigration trap." Dinesh D'Souza gets oppressed again: no summer vacation from his sentence. Circling back around, we further consider Radley Balko's sweeping epic, plus a few other stray thoughts that came to mind.
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