[Dialogue] Our sugar ethanol policy -- yikes1

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

This was pretty good too.  
 
 
Dumb as We Wanna Be 
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 20, 2006
 
I asked Dr. José Goldemberg, secretary for the environment for São Paulo  
State and a pioneer of Brazil's ethanol industry, the obvious question: Is the  
fact that the U.S. has imposed a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff to prevent Americans  
from importing sugar ethanol from Brazil ''just stupid or really stupid.''  
Thanks to pressure from Midwest farmers and agribusinesses, who want to  
protect the U.S. corn ethanol industry from competition from Brazilian sugar  
ethanol, we have imposed a stiff tariff to keep it out. We do this even though  
Brazilian sugar ethanol provides eight times the energy of the fossil fuel used  
to make it, while American corn ethanol provides only 1.3 times the energy of 
 the fossil fuel used to make it. We do this even though sugar ethanol 
reduces  greenhouses gases more than corn ethanol. And we do this even though sugar 
cane  ethanol can easily be grown in poor tropical countries in Africa or the  
Caribbean, and could actually help alleviate their poverty.  
Yes, you read all this right. We tax imported sugar ethanol, which could  
finance our poor friends, but we don't tax imported crude oil, which definitely  
finances our rich enemies. We'd rather power anti-Americans with our energy  
purchases than promote antipoverty.  
''It's really stupid,'' answered Dr. Goldemberg.  
If I seem upset about this, I am. Development and environmental experts have  
long searched for environmentally sustainable ways to alleviate rural poverty 
--  especially for people who live in places like Brazil, where there is a 
constant  temptation to log the Amazon. Sure, ecotourism and rain forest soap 
are nice,  but they never really scale. As a result, rural people in Brazil are 
always  tempted go back to logging or farming sensitive areas.  
Ethanol from sugar cane could be a scalable, sustainable alternative -- if we 
 are smart and get rid of silly tariffs, and if Brazil is smart and starts  
thinking right now about how to expand its sugar cane biofuel industry without  
harming the environment.  
The good news is that sugar cane doesn't require irrigation and can't grow in 
 much of the Amazon, because it is too wet. So if the Brazilian sugar 
industry  does realize its plan to grow from 15 million to 25 million acres over the 
next  few years, it need not threaten the Amazon.  
However, sugar cane farms are located mostly in south-central Brazil, around  
São Paulo, and along the northeast coast, on land that was carved out of 
drier  areas of the Atlantic rain forest, which has more different species of 
plants  and animals per acre than the Amazon. Less than 7 percent of the total 
Atlantic  rain forest remains -- thanks to sugar, coffee, orange plantations and 
cattle  grazing.  
I flew in a helicopter over the region near São Paulo, and what I saw was not 
 pretty: mansions being carved from forested hillsides near the city, rivers 
that  have silted because of logging right down to the banks, and wide swaths 
of  forest that have been cleared and will never return.  
''It makes you weep,'' said Gustavo Fonseca, my traveling companion, a  
Brazilian and the executive vice president of Conservation International. ''What  I 
see here is a totally human dominated system in which most of the 
biodiversity  is gone.''  
As demand for sugar ethanol rises -- and that is a good thing for Brazil and  
the developing world, said Fonseca, ''we have to make sure that the expansion 
is  done in a planned way.''  
Over the past five years, the Amazon has lost 7,700 square miles a year, most 
 of it for cattle grazing, soybean farming and palm oil. A similar expansion 
for  sugar ethanol could destroy the cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, another  
incredibly species-rich area, and the best place in Brazil to grow more 
sugar.  
A proposal is floating around the Brazilian government for a major expansion  
of the sugar industry, far beyond even the industry's plans. No wonder  
environmental activists are holding a conference in Germany this fall about the  
impact of biofuels. I could see some groups one day calling for an ethanol  
boycott -- à la genetically modified foods -- if they feel biofuels are raping  
the environment.  
We have the tools to resolve these conflicts. We can map the lands that need  
protection for their biodiversity or the environmental benefits they provide  
rural communities. But sugar farmers, governments and environmentalists need 
to  sit down early -- like now -- to identify those lands and commit the money 
 needed to protect them. Otherwise, we will have a fight over every acre, and 
 sugar ethanol will never realize its potential. That would be really, really 
 stupid. 

 
Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
(http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla) 

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