Children’s Health Defense has a terrific article on carbon costs of biofuels and the ESG scam. Then, at the bottom, I saw the source was my colleague Joe Mercola, with the source url here: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/10/stupidity-of-ethanol-as-green-energy.aspx
Joe summarizes his article as follows:
· Carbon neutrality refers to a product that has net zero carbon emissions. The manufacture and use of corn-based ethanol has expanded based on the assumption that it’s carbon neutral and therefore far better for the environment than gasoline. However, several studies have shown that such assumptions are categorically false
· A 2016 study found corn grown for ethanol only offset 37% of carbon dioxide emissions produced by burning biofuels, resulting in net-positive carbon dioxide emissions that are greater than gasoline
· One of the primary reasons why growing corn for ethanol has a net-positive CO2 impact is because farmers are plowing up native grasslands to make more room for corn; 60 tons of carbon dioxide are released into the environment per acre of grassland plowed
· Ignoring water consumption further underestimates CO2 emissions from land-use change by 28%. When corn plants' water needs are considered, corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline
· A five-year study published in 2022 concluded the CO2 emissions from corn-based ethanol are at least 24% greater than that of gasoline. On top of that, it has led to increased fertilizer use, resulting in greater water pollution and a growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
·
Mercola makes mincemeat of the drive to biofuels. Growing biofuels puts in far more CO2 into the atmosphere than is spared by not using fossil fuels. He also gets into the politics of what this is all about, in his opinion, which is CONTROL over you and all of us.
I am a lifelong environmentalist. I want to see sustainable energy and a reduction of our release of CO2. But I again stress logic. It takes a lot of petroleum energy to grow corn into ethanol, or even food for that matter. There is tremendous environmental destruction in plowing up the earth and releasing lots of CO2 stored naturally in the earth but then spit out with plowing. Our rulers are attempting to limit and control our lives through ESG (environment, social and governance scores) to support the “politically correct” But what, in fact, IS politically correct? Apparently if I am not “woke” I am not politically correct to earn a good E score. If I am not into environmental destruction to extract lithium and other minerals, I might not have a good E score. And if I am not known as a progressive, I might not get a good G score.
CO2 is not really a. pollutant. Nature will ultimately recycle the gas. Humans could help, but we are not good stewards. We are permitting the wanton destruction of earth’s lungs – the Amazon (and our oceans), and destroying forests that could inhale the CO2, rather than protect and replant them.
What nature cannot recycle is forever chemicals, plastics, halogenated petroleum products, like DDT and more. I believe these are much more of an existential threat to our planet than the CO2, for the simple reason that once we are gone, nature will rebalance CO2. But, can nature fix the havoc to the biosphere we have poisoned (being conservative), with our failure to reign in the explosive petrochemical industry.
Nature cannot replenish our groundwater as much as we are stealing it from the earth. I read today that the spin of the earth and its gravity has been measurably altered by damming of water and ground water extraction, displacing the center of gravity of the spinning planet causing a wobble. Logic tells me we may see more terrible earthquakes as the wobble increases. And Terri and I live in ground zero of the same.
The purpose of this post is to share my agreement that the RULERS care little about you or me, evidenced by hypocrisy of their approach to the environment. I believe American interests are far more endangered by the destruction of the Amazon than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet we have thrown away $200 billion of our children’s future in Ukraine while the Amazon burns, and could have been preserved to a large extent with that kind of money. Government demands “recycling” of plastic bottles which “recycling” leads to more microplastics (as I have reported). When I was a kid, we scoured parks and trash for glass soda bottles, redeemable for 2ç at the time. While it might not be convenient to carry around a glass bottle of water compared to plastic, surely soda could be so packed in glass and the bottles recycled in the real sense of the word, rather than the lip service recycling (shredding) we have now for plastic.
I had a relative who worked for a major oil company as an engineer. He told me in 1976 that ARCO did not have to sell even a gallon of gasoline to turn a profit. Money was to be made in petrochemicals. These are the precursors to man-made materials and chemicals, and plastic production is expected to double within a generation.
So, consider this. Look at all the monstrous oil tankers and pipelines shipping oil all over the world. As gasoline combustion falls, where will all that volume of hydrocarbons go? We are extracting hydrocarbons naturally existing in the earth, and turning the natural liquid hydrocarbons into oil tankers sized volumes of solid hydrocarbons and chemicals and gracing our fragile biosphere with the same. How many “landfills” can we fill with that volume. How many beaches? And in many places it is not even buried. When I was in Sierra Leone in 2014 to tackle Ebola, I looked down, from a non-functioning hospital, on an open dump the size of a small city where plastic bags and toss aways were simply blowing in the wind. On a Moroccan beach many years ago, on a trip visiting a daughter, there was more surface covered with plastic bags than sand. Is there any wonder why we see pictures like this of once pristine beaches? This brings tears to my eyes.
Perhaps that is why I prefer the mountains, where hikers seem to have more respect for Nature’s wonders than the beer drinking beach goers:
A clean environment is our birthright. While I am a small government Libertarian type, I feel strongly that government MUST reign in the corporate demons destroying us rather than protect them, as government is doing today. And, I again posit that CO2, while a significant problem, is not going to lead to our extinction. All the rest mentioned above (inclusive of the forced corporate medicine on our people) might just do so.
We may or may not get an opportunity to elect a leader who might not be a pawn of the multinational corporations. Please call candidates on the carpet on their take from the corporate dole. That not only includes candidates running for national office, but local as well, like those of the kind of California Senator Richard Pan, whose efforts for forced vaccination polluted (in my opinion) the bodies of thousands of California children and forced thousands of others to move out of the state.
While I don’t like government intervention in private enterprise (even like energy production); however, were I an elected leader, I would do all in my power to encourage (one way or the other) rapid development of clean fusion energy, and on behalf of ALL the people, which would go a long way to liberate our prison planet. Energy would be essentially limitless, clean, cheap, once developed. Imagine the world we could have. I do.
To your Excellent Health,
Robert Jay Rowen, MD
Dr. Mercola's articles expire so whenever I share one of his articles on my substack I always save them as a PDF and then upload to dropbox and download to Substack. So the article of Dr. Mercola's that you reference is now gone.
" Our rulers are attempting to limit and control our lives through ESG (environment, social and governance scores) to support the “politically correct” But what, in fact, IS politically correct? Apparently if I am not “woke” I am not politically correct to earn a good E score."
I believe you are correct in pointing to "our rulers" as being the culprits behind our environmental and social problems. They are the ones who are truly in control of our legislators. Which is why legislators are bending over backwards to accomodate them. How else are they going to receive that oh so important funding for the next political campaign or those great semi legal extras. But I stop short of bringing in undefined terms like "woke" which can and are interpretated in any way that some one deems fit. I feel it is much more important to stay focused on clearly identifiable areas of concern where the well being of the people is being curtailed by the powerful few.