Is This the End of U.S. Biofuels?
Peter Zeihan
6 min
The macroeconomic situation that led us to doing ethanol at scale is fading pretty quickly. Ethanol was fine in a highly globalized world where there were lots of options.
Chapters
-
0:00
The Rise of Ethanol Mandates
Explains the history of U.S. ethanol mandates and their impact on corn usage.
-
2:15
The Global Food Crisis Risk
Describes how diverting corn to fuel threatens global food security in a post-globalized world.
-
3:45
The Fading Support for Biofuels
Details why environmentalists and national security arguments no longer support ethanol mandates.
Key points
- 0:00
The federal government mandated that a certain percentage of most gasoline must contain ethanol.
- 0:00
Total corn grown in the United States roughly doubled between 2004 and today due to biofuel needs.
- 0:00
Diverting corn to fuel took land away from producing food for human consumption.
- 0:00
Global food prices increased in the late 2000s because American farmers diverted crops to fuel.
- 2:15
Major producers like China and Brazil cannot function as agricultural producers without globalization.
- 2:15
Removing one-third of global food production would cause food prices to skyrocket.
- 3:45
The national security argument for ethanol faded because the U.S. is now the world's largest exporter of refined product.
- 3:45
Environmentalists abandoned ethanol because growing and moving corn generates as much CO2 as gasoline.
- 3:45
Farmers will earn less growing corn for ethanol than growing food for human consumption.
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