A02911
Articles : Sci-TechBiotech-Biofuel Benefactors
With royal fanfare, British Petroleum recently announced a massive donation to UC Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and the University of Illinois to develop new sources of energy – primarily biotechnology to produce biofuel crops. This comes on the anniversary of Berkeley’s hapless research deal with seed giant Novartis ten years ago. However, at half a billion dollars, the BP grant dwarfs Novartis’ investment by a factor of ten. The graphics of the announcement were unmistakable: BP’s corporate logo is perfectly aligned with the flags of the Nation, the State, and the University.
CEO/Chairman Robert A. Malone proclaimed BP was “[J]oining some of the world’s best science and engineering talent to meet the demand for low carbon energy… we will be working to improve and expand the production of clean, renewable energy through the development of better crops…” This partnership reflects the rapid, unchecked and unprecedented global corporate alignment of the world’s largest agribusiness (ADM, Cargill and Bunge), biotech (Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dupont), petroleum (BP, TOTAL, Shell), and automotive industries (Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, SAAB). With what for them is a relatively small investment, these industries will appropriate academic expertise built over decades of public support, translating into billions in revenues for these global partners.
Could this be a “win-win” agenda for the University, the public, the environment and industry? Hardly. In addition to overwhelming the University’s research agenda, what scientists behind this blatantly private business venture fail to mention, is that the apparent free lunch of crop-based fuel can’t satisfy our energy appetite, and it will not be free, nor environmentally sound.
Dedicating all present U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12% of our gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. Total U.S. cropland reaches 625,000 sq.mi. To replace U.S. oil consumption with biofuels we would need 1.4 million sq.mi. of corn for ethanol and 8.8 million sq. mi. of soybean for biodiesel. Biofuels are expected to turn Iowa and South Dakota into corn-importers by 2008.
The biofuel energy balance – the amount of fossil energy put in to producing crop biomass compared to that coming out – is anything but promising. Researchers Patzek and Pimentel see serious negative energy balances with biofuels. Other researchers see only 1.2 to 1.8 fold returns, for ethanol, at best, with the jury still lukewarm on cellulosic biofuels.
Industrial methods of corn and soybean production depend on large scale monocultures. Industrial corn requires high levels of chemical nitrogen fertilizer (largely responsible for the dead zone in Gulf of Mexico) and the herbicide atrazine, an endocrine disruptor. Soybeans require massive amounts of non selective, Roundup herbicide that upsets soil ecology and produces “superweeds.” Both monocultures produce massive topsoil erosion and surface and groundwater pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff. Each gallon of ethanol sucks up 3-4 gallons of water in the production of biomass. The expansion of irrigated “fuel on the cob” into drier areas in the Midwest will draw down the already suffering Ogallala aquifer.
One of the more surreptitious industrial motives of the biofuels agenda — and the reason Monsanto and company are key players — is the opportunity to irreversibly convert agriculture to genetically engineered crops (GMOs). Presently, 52% of corn, 89% of soy, and 50% of canola in the US are GMO. The expansion of biofuels with “designer corn” genetically tailored for special ethanol processing plants will remove all practical barriers to the permanent contamination of all non-GMO crops.
Obviously the U.S. can’t satisfy its energy appetite with biofuels. Instead, fuel crops will be grown in the developing world on large scale plantations of sugarcane, oil palm and soybean, which are already replacing primary and secondary tropical forests and grasslands in Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Malaysia. Soybeans have already caused the destruction of over 91 million acres of forests and grasslands in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. To satisfy world market demands, Brasil alone will need to clear 148 million additional acres of forest. Reduction of greenhouse gases is lost when carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of small-scale peasant farmers are being displaced by soybean expansion. Many more stand to lose their land under the biofuels stampede. Already, the expanding cropland planted to yellow corn for ethanol has reduced the supply of white corn for tortillas in Mexico, sending prices up 400%. This led peasant leaders at the recent World Social Forum in Nairobi to demand, “No full tanks when there are still empty bellies!”
By promoting large scale mechanized monocultures which require agrochemical inputs and machinery, and as carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops, CO2 emissions will increase not decrease. The only way to stop global warming is to promote small scale organic agriculture and decrease the use of all fuels, which requires major reductions in consumption patterns and development of massive public transportation systems, areas that the University of California should be actively researching and that BP and the other biofuel partners will never invest one penny toward.
The potential consequences for the environment and society of BP’s funding are deeply disturbing. In the wake of the report of the external review of the UCB-Novartis agreement, that recommended that the University not enter into such agreements in the future, how could such a major deal be announced without wide consultation of the UC Faculty? The University has been recruited into a corporate partnership that may irreversibly transform the planet’s food and fuel systems and concentrate tremendous power in the hands of a few corporate partners.
It is up to the citizens of California to hold the University accountable to research that supports truly sustainable alternatives to the energy crisis. A serious public debate on this new program is long overdue.
Miguel A. Altieri is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Eric Holt-Gimenez is Executive Director of Food First in Oakland, Ca.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...
cheers
Thats a sobering read.
I’m going to sing the doom song.
Doom, doom, doom…
Is this a replay of the Novartis scheme at Berkeley? The real problem here is that this so called “donation” is actually a move to control research by a fossil fuel corporation, modelled after Stanford’s “Global Climate and Energy Program” – which was funded largely by ExxonMobil, who then gained final decision power over what research to fund, meaning there’s lots of coal-to-liquid and ‘clean coal’ con job work being done, and nothing else.
If BP wanted to fund renewable research, they could set up their own labs to do it – buit it’s cheaper to have the University of California do it, and just as with the Stanford case, they’ll control all patents generated for a minium of five years, if not longer, and anyone who thinks they’ll promote renewables (a threat to their lucrative petroleum markets) is living in a fantasy world – this is an attempt to control renewable energy and prevent it from getting onto the market, which is exactly what fossil fuel corporations have been doing ever since 1903.
The corporate corruption of the University of California is a documented fact.
One other point: the situation in Mexico is due to the passage of NAFTA in 1996 , which allowed US agribusiness to dump corn in Mexico at below-market rates. This drove farmers off the land, and now US agribusiness has cornered the market (with the help of their $30 billion a year in US taxpayer subsidies), and are jacking up prices. The small farmers now work in slave labor ‘free-trade zones’ or as undoumented workers on US corporate farms – that’s the real dynamic at play.
Conveniently, agribusiness can blame this all on corn, but in 2005-2006 only 15% of corn went to ethanol; 55% went to factory farming hogs and chickens, and 20% was exported to Mexico and Africa under ‘free-trade rules’ – only 2% went to food production in the US.
Corn-based ethanol is no panacea, but it has little to do with the situation in Mexico – get your facts straight.
However, this doesnt take into account raising efficiency through research. Sure We cant sustain current levels of energy demand, but we can cut fossil fuel consumption with some biofuels, and raise efficiency to slash that consumption even more.
Obviously Ethonol has its downsides, like instead of using the corn for fuel (or for feeding livestock) it could be used for humanitarian purposes. Although, on the flip side of that, that would just increase the thirdworld’s consumption as they strive to live like Americans…
anyone know why I cant email this article? (im getting a ‘cant send draft articles’ message
thanks anthony, nice find.
We obviously can’t trust big oil and big agro have the keys to the future. For that matter, we can’t let capitalism have it.
We already have the solutions to fuel efficiency but we’re numbskulled on going about implementation. A lighter car goes further cheaper. Now you can’t just make a 800 pound car and put it on the road without a behemoth pushing it a block or two. You have to lighten over time.
We really need to evaluate where we are going with our cars all the time. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to design communities as if every member had a car.
We can either start localizing now or we can be forced into it later.