At the end of February, I blogged on a Fortune article that had the sub-head, “The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike.” That article noted:

Spurred by an ethanol plant construction binge, corn prices have gone stratospheric, soaring from below $2 a bushel in 2006 to over $5.25 a bushel today. As a result, it’s become difficult for ethanol plants to make a healthy profit, even with oil at $100 a barrel.

Just six weeks later, we have an AP article with the subhead: “Corn Prices Jump to Record $6 a Bushel, Driving Up Costs for Food, Alternative Energy.”

And it gets better worse:

Worldwide demand for corn to feed livestock and to make biofuel is putting enormous pressure on global supply. And with the U.S. expected to plant less corn, the supply shortage will only worsen. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that farmers will plant 86 million acres of corn in 2008, an 8 percent drop from last year….

Another loser in higher corn costs is ethanol producers, who are struggling to squeeze out gains as corn’s record-setting run outpaces the price of ethanol, currently at around $2.50 a gallon.

“For years, corn was cheap and fermentation processes for ethanol production came to completely dominate the biofuel industry in North America,” Michael Jackson, president and chairman of Vancouver-based ethanol maker Syntec Biofuel, said this week. “Now, with corn prices well over $5 a bushel, corn ethanol economics have gone out the window.”

And the worst is yet to come:

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Kenneth P. Green of the American Enterprise Instute (AEI) graced yesterday’s Washington Post opinion pages with a piece entitled “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

Green claimed the differences between the global warming plans of the presidential candidates are questions “about stringency and method” — “stringency” being Green’s scare-word for doing what science says is necessary to avoid climate catastrophe. Throughout the piece Green reiterates the tired claim that solving global warming means choosing between the environment and the economy, saying:

The eternal tension of environment vs. economy has been largely pooh-poohed by environmentalists in recent years of high-flying economic performance, but it will not be as easily waved away with the U.S. standing at the threshold of a recession and with the U.S. automotive sector in serious competitive trouble.

The only thing “green” about Kenneth Green is his name. In 2007, he offered scientists and economists $10,000 each on behalf of AEI, “to undermine a major climate change report” from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

AEI is part of the Exxon machine. Lee Raymond, the ExxonMobil CEO who received a $400 million golden parachute upon retirement in 2005, is on the AEI board of trustees. AEI has received $1,870,000 in funding from Exxon since 1998, and its fellows include Dick Cheney’s wife Lynne, torture advocate John Yoo, and neoconservative architects of the Iraq war like John Bolton, Richard Perle, Fred Kagan, and Paul Wolfowitz.

The true choice in the global warming debate is between the gray fossil-fuel economy and a green sustainable economy. As Van Jones of Green For All described to Grist:

There’s no way to get changes big enough to solve these problems without creating pathways out of poverty for millions of new green-collar workers. The renewable economy is more labor-intensive, less capital-intensive; therefore, there should be a net increase in jobs. There will also be lots and lots of money made. So beyond just having African-American kids be the workers in a green economy, we also want them to be inventors and investors and owners and entrepreneurs in the green economy.

Green For All is now hosting the Dream Reborn conference in Memphis, Tennessee, marking the 40th anniversay of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, “to bring together a generation of new leaders who are taking on the chief moral obligation of the 21st century, building a green economy for all.”

To find out more about how Americans are working together to build the green economy, read the Center for American Progress series, It’s Easy Being Green.

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) said of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):

“Climate change is the road less traveled but he’s traveled it even more than Al Gore,” Graham said. “Al Gore has talked about it and deserves great recognition but he was around here a long time and never introduced a bill.”

Let’s see. McCain got 43 votes the first time he pushed his bill with Lieberman. He added some nuclear subsidies for the second go-round and got 38 votes. So I’m not sure he can lay claim to great achievements.

The key point for me is that unlike Gore — and unlike Clinton and Obama — McCain doesn’t support the policies needed to successfully address catastrophic climate change without devastating the economy (and without an absurd over-reliance on nuclear power):

• Campaign stunner: McCain “might take [new CAFE standards] off the books”
• McCain’s non-straight talk on nuclear power
• Even more doubletalk on mandates from John McCain
• No climate for old men: Why John McCain isn’t the candidate to stop global warming
• McCain’s Double-Talk Express on Global Warming

Heck — McCain ramped down his talk about climate recently, even as Gore ramps up his communications effort. For the full statement by Graham, and a full rebuttal, see ThinkProgress, which has a great post that I’ll just reprint below :

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Two of the comments on my too-long piece on the Pielke Nature article have really boiled it down. And then I remembered an old joke that says it best of all.

John writes:

Joe’s vehemence over this Pielke paper, I think, comes from the fact that unlike some of the commenters here, he is looking at it in the context of Pielke’s past work. In many of his previous writings, Pielke (like other delayers/deniers/skeptics) has worked to convey the messages that global warming might not be the crisis that the IPCC report suggested. His criticisms of global warming activism have tended to be that their recommendations might be too extreme, and so more scrutiny was required. Given that history, it is amazing that Pielke can turn around now and with a straight face argue that the recommendations of the IPCC and activists weren’t radical enough.

It’s the height of irony for skeptics to argue that the IPCC wasn’t alarmist enough on global warming. And it’s the depth of perversity for them to even imply that because global warming is so bad, we shouldn’t bother with the efficiency and decarbonization measures we can actually take now.

And Tyler writes:

I’m tired of calls for more R&D. I can’t count the number of technologies I come across daily that are off-the-shelf, have decent payback, and make a serious dent in emissions by either improving energy efficiency or reducing energy requirements. Based on what I’ve seen in Canada, our universities and startups up humming with R&D, but we’re seriously lacking demonstration and deployment, and programs that assist large-scale deployment in industries that stand to benefit in the long run. It’s a sad situation, and I don’t think government gets this. Articles like the one in Nature put too much emphasis on human ingenuity, like some silver bullet is going to come along and save the day if we simply throw more dollars into R&D. It’s simply foolish.

Precisely. Tyler’s comment reminded me of one of my favorate old jokes, which I’ll reprint from here:

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So the Breakthrough Institute headline on the Nature paper by Roger Pielke, Jr. (debunked here) is

Nature Journal “Bombshell” Exposes Massive Global Warming Technology Gap

I kid you not.

The Breakthrough headline on the paper by Breakthrough Fellow Pielke actually includes a word of praise from Breakthrough Fellow Marty Hoffert! Needless to say, B.I. does not identify that the source of the word “bombshell” is B.I. itself.

The source, of course, is the praise Hoffert gave the paper in the Nature news story on the paper where Nature also amazingly failed to explain both Pielke and Hoffert are Breakthrough Fellows).

What’s next, Breakthrough Institute quoting Pielke’s father?

[For the record, I am the one calling my own post a bombshell, or, I should say, a "bombshell." Got a problem with that?]

My effort at a screen capture here:

clipped from www.thebreakthrough.org

Nature Journal “Bombshell” Exposes Massive Global Warming Technology Gap
Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, Jr., and two other climate experts find that the U.N. IPCC underestimated the global warming technology challenge — it’s twice as large as the world has come to believe. Read the article, the Nature editorial, the press release, the Breakthrough analysis, and Breakthrough’s FAQ.

Bank of America CEO Kenneth D. Lewis received two utterly different awards from environmental groups on Tuesday, April 1 — the Energy Action Coalition and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) voted him the “Fossil Fool of the Year,” while the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) honored him at their annual fundraising gala as a “Force for Nature.”

Rebecca Tarbotton of RAN said, “Ken Lewis faced a who’s who list of polluters, but voters deemed him the worst of a very deserving crop.”

Frances Beinecke of NRDC said, “We have the know-how to beat global warming. What we need is the leadership to make it happen, and Ken Lewis is providing that leadership.”

FOSSIL FOOL? Climate and environmental activists celebrated “Fossil Fools Day” yesterday, April 1, with actions across the globe protesting the fossil fuel industry. Heeding Al Gore’s call for “young people to engage in peaceful protests to block major new carbon sources,” they blockaded coal mines, coal plants, and energy company headquarters.

As part of the day of action, the Energy Action Coalition dedicated the Fossil Fools Awards to “the world’s biggest contributors to our global addiction to fossil fuels.” Kenneth Lewis won top honors for facilitating “nearly $1 billion in loans to Massey Energy and Arch Coal, two of the largest companies involved in the environmentally devastating process of mountaintop removal coal mining” in the last few years. Bank of America also made several billion dollars in loans and facilitated stock offerings in 2006 for Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company.

FORCE OF NATURE? NRDC’s tenth annual “Forces for Nature” $1000-a-plate fundraising gala feted Ken Lewis and NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg at Cipriani 42nd Street.

NRDC honored Lewis for Bank of America’s ten-year, $20 billion environmental initiative which “addresses climate change by championing sustainable business practices through innovative lending and investing strategies, new financial products and services and operations.” The initiative was launched last year. The new Bank of America Tower in New York City, when completed in 2009, will be one of the most environmentally friendly and efficient office
buildings in the world.

GETTING CLEANER: At the NRDC gala, Lewis made the major announcement that Bank of America would adopt the Carbon Principles, “a set of guidelines that help advisors and lenders to power companies evaluate and address carbon risks in the financing of projects” drafted in January by Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Morgan Stanley. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the ‘Principles’ push utilities to explore other alternatives to regular coal plants . . . Still, the banks make clear they won’t stop funding all conventional coal plants—they’ll simply want assurances higher rates will cover likely costs of carbon.”

Lewis’s announcement demonstrates the effectiveness of having both critical pressure by the Rainforest Action Network and cooperative ventures with NRDC in changing the business practices of multinational corporations. But much more effort — from many more people — is needed to compel those with great power to accept their great responsibility to be responsible stewards of this planet.

All that glitters is not gold. And all that grows is not green.

That is the belated realization about grain ethanol — in fact, about any ethanol whose feedstock is grown on cropland. Joe Romm has done a good job posting on this issue, including his report on the recent studies featured in Science magazine. I’d like to weigh in with a few additional points

The folly of grain ethanol moved this week from Science magazine to TIME in a cover article titled “The Clean Energy Scam“. TIME traces the carbon-rich life-cycle of fuel from grain. As food and fuel compete for corn, the price of the crop rises. As the price rises, farmers have more incentive to grow it. To grow it, they use energy-intensive fertilizers and fuels.

To create more corn, farmers are turning prairies into cropland, releasing carbon that was stored by grasses and undisturbed soils. That unfortunate trend is well underway. As USA Today reports, landowners throughout the Farm Belt are growing crops on land that has not been cultivated for decades and, in some cases, centuries. Last year, farmers pulled 2.5 million environmentally sensitive acres out of the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Another 5 million acres now preserved under CRP are scheduled to become available for planting over the next two years, as farmers’ conservation contracts expire.

It’s likely that carbon sequestration was not among the CRP’s objectives when the program was created in 1985. Its purpose was to protect wetlands and wildlife habitat. Now, wildlife, ecosystems and the atmosphere all will miss the program’s benefits as America’s thirst for grain alcohol fuels the drive for more cropland.

The damage extends beyond the U.S.

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