JHK: "The ethanol craze means that we're going to burn up the Midwest's last six inches of topsoil in our gas-tanks."
Posted by Prof. Goose on February 19, 2007 - 7:40pm
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: corn, corn production, ethanol, james kunstler [list all tags]
An open thread to discuss JHK's latest, "The Big Chill." While you're at it, refresh yourself by reading Robert Rapier's many posts on ethanol, which he nailed long ago. ([1], [2], [3], and [4] are just some examples, find the rest by clicking on Robert's name and going through the story list...), as well as EP's "Sustainability, Energy Independence and Agricultural Policy".
OK, I'll start.
I think corn-based ethanol production is going to come to a very simple end: however fast the price of fuel increases, the price of corn will go up faster. In a couple of years, three at the outside, all these nifty new ethanol plants will no longer be financially viable. Their feedstock will cost more than their product.
They will close down. The investors will lose their shirts. The jobs will be lost.
We are simply too close to "peak food" to be allocating food to fuel production. It will show up as price increases.
For information on food production, I highly recommend "Outgrowing the Earth" by Lester R. Brown (2004).
Maybe those plants can converted to non-food feedstocks, I don't know.
I forsee a lot of moonshine being made in those plants.
Moonshine carries a much higher margin than fuel.
Yes. And given our future prospects, we are going to need a lot of booze to assuage the pain.
If they all close down corn prices will drop and some of them will start back up. Given current subsidies (or higher crude prices) the most efficient corn ethanol producers can handle current corn price levels. More acres of corn will be planted in response to higher corn prices which will tend to dampen the price pressure. Distillers grain from ethanol producers will substitute for some of the corn going into cattle feeding. Prediction: higher crude prices, higher corn prices, higher ethanol prices, higher farm land prices, higher ADM stock price!
Right after all those ethanol plants close down, gas will be at $10.00 a gallon. Concurrently, high food prices will start to make the situation desperate for lower income families. Some idealistic politician, like the current Montana governor, will say, "let's open some CTL plants to make fertilizer and diesel fuel!". Nothing will get built for 5-10 years because that's how long it will take the reality of permanent oil shortages to set in and for the desperation to build up enough to make the situation "real" enough to the public at large that something -- absolutely anything -- needs to be done -- global warming or no global warming.
A lot earlier than that we'll start shipping all our coal to China. They will turn it into Diesel fuel and fertilizer in their CTL plants that they are currently constructing. They will then ship the diesel fuel and fertilizer back to us. They can do this with a clean conscience as they signed on to Kyoto treaty but are not bound by any CO2 emission limits.
I'm not saying that the approach to peak oil is simply a choice between CTL and conservation. It's everything (conservation, electrification, re-localization, tar sands, any unforeseen Deus ex machina techno-fixes, animal-traction, etc) all at the same time -- full speed ahead. Even with all this, there will still be plenty of unpleasantness.
1) The rich don't care.
2) The rich can pay.
My guess, and this seems to be guessing, is that the corn prices will go up - the demand for ethanol as a fuel will not be that elastic if there is no other fuel choice. Meat prices will increase too - but again the rich don't care.
The only salvation will be ethanol based upon cellulose; although that'll still destroy the land. All farming is strip mining - if you don't return to the land what you grow as compost for future crops (unless you keep the house of cards teetering by providing fertilizers; but even then the issue of soil erosion is not addressed nor is aquifer depletion and contamination).
Food for humans in general will go up. Ethanol is a way to continue the subsidy for an automotible-dependent socienty and spread the payment of that subsidy to everyone, regardless of how much you drive or whether you even own a car. Everyone has got to eat.
I imagine those outrageous corn subsidies will continue, obscuring the unfavorable energetics from the All Powerful, Beneficient Market. So we seem to be observing boondoggle, and progressing economic dysfunction at the gate to the backside of Hubbert's peak.
I find it astonishing that the Powers That Be don't institute conservation measures. Even the most rudimentary calculation of enlightened self-interest should show that conservation has the most immediate, largest, and most enduring benefits for the US capitalist economy, especially for the ruling elites. Instead, we have defunding of our vestigial passenger rail service, ruinous wars, and re-enforced business as usual.
I just don't get it. Anybody got a spare planet out there?
Long term vs short term. Short term requires year on year growth, or the natives get restless. Long term ultimately requires recognizing physical realities. It is easier to apply a steep discount rate and say that technology and the Invisible Hand will save us than it is to accept the possibility that some of those limits are here now and that technology and the Invisible Hand may bite us in the hind end instead. If you're a vested interested, you don't want to hear about it; if you're a voter (whose productivity is going up but whose wages are not, and who may have done the irrational exuberance thing in the days of low interest rates) you don't want to hear about it; if you're a politician, you tell the voters what they want to hear. Reconciling the long and short terms will require pain and wrenching effort on the part of the people -- how would you go about doing it?
There is going to be an economic crunch (to put it mildly) if we attempt to maintain business as usual much longer. There will also doubtless be economic and social pain if we attempt to mitigate peak oil before the fact.
But there is no getting around major economic dislocation in the near-to-intermediate future.
The issue is: do we attempt to manage the transition proactively, or do we just party on the deck of the Titanic while the captain orders steady-as-she-goes, full-speed-ahead?
Capitalism thrives on change, churning and new frontiers of all sorts anyway, so a big redirection to conservation shouldn't be threatening to the current elites. A conservation program would provide ample new business oportunities and growth while energy is still relatively cheap. The history of the US War Production Board in WWII shows us that even stringent measures such as rationing, do not send the economy, or public opinion, into a nose dive. (Wikipedia has a good entry on the War Production Board).
It seems perfectly reasonable to massage public opinion with a marketing campaign; conservation should be a much easier sell than the war in Irag, Afghanistan (and Iran?). The public's opinion has been successfully manipulated for decades to be hostile to its own self interest. With a propoganda machine that powerful, it should be easy to mobilize public support for measures to conserve resources of all sorts, and relocalize the economy.
An augmented social safety net will be established so the public won't be staring into an abyss; that's why the Great Depression left us with the New Deal, instead of a Socialist revolution. And, for better or worse, even the current elites get to maintain their power and priviledge, at least for longer than with present trends.
Kunstler's piece just reminds me how disappointed I am at the Democratic candidates' positions, or lack of positions, on invading Iran. We're quietly being led to a choice between Obama and Clinton. Obama seems like a great orator who lucked into the Senate because sleeping with Jeri Ryan at home wasn't enough for his predecessor. I don't see him as experienced enough, but the press liked him well enough to actually shoot down a smear by Faux News. Clinton seems intent on saying as little as possible, but what she does say seems calculated to stake out the middle ground.
Corn Farms Replace London Flats, Soho Lofts as Hottest Property
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a4C7n_GCfjYw&refer=h...
I found this while I was moving a desk, and actually read it this time:
Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America
The article includes brief descriptions of
Arcosanti, Cordes Junction AZ
Drop City, Trinidad CO,
The Farm, Summertown TN,
Sonora Cohousing, Tucson AZ,
Earthhaven Ecovillage, Black Mountain NC,
Heathcote Community, Freeland MD and
Prairie Crossing, Grayslake IL
http://www.architectmagazine.com/industry-news.asp?sectionID=1006&articl...
CBS Sunday Morning presented a Buddhist retreat - not too far from the Golden Gate Bridge. Their take was on the boomers retreating from the hectic modern world seeking a simpler life. There's a video here:
Zen Living On The West Coast
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/sunday/main3445.shtml
Also just below that video is Ben Stein talking about how great the stock market is going - as long as no one you know is serving in Fallujah. This is the same Ben Stein who really loves his Caddy. Go figure.
Donal,
I really appreciated the A. Mag link! I have been interested in intentional communities for close to 40 years and have bookshelves devoted to this.
I've also been able to observe "local" communities try to walk the talk and go up inflames. And, I think this is the real take home: Even when people have a shared, shall I call it dream, reality, personal relationships and economics cannot be avoided. FWIW, one of my favorite book is Getting Back Together by Robert Houriet, 1971, pre-ISBN.
What I find important is that, essentially, homogeneous groups couldn't pull it off over a long period of time. Therefore, why does anyone anticipate a transition to a lower energy society to proceed "smoothly" when it involves millions of disparate people?
The soil will be destroyed at an accelerating rate. No one will care...and few will change their energy usage until it is too late.
I have to say that I would probably have more faith in the future had I not spent years considering the past.
Todd; a Realist
I'm curious as to the factors that make the successful communities successful and others fall apart. Certainly we can look at the Mennonite communities in Belize and Paraguay as examples of successful, even prosperous, insular, low-energy self-sufficient agrarian communities. Did anyone see the GlobeTrekker Episode where Justine Shapiro is backpacking through Belize and stumbles upon the Mennonite communities there? It's like a bit of the backwoods mid-west 50 years ago in the middle of Central America. They don't even speak Spanish but some archaic version of German.
Hi abelardlindsay,
Thanks for the open nature of your question: "I'm curious as to the factors that make the successful communities successful and others fall apart."
Over on "drumbeat",(http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2290#comment-161453), I posted an idea for another approach, namely, making the place one finds oneself into a "successful community". Just 'cause it really is amazing (what they're doing), and because it's my evening to be brave -
I'd suggest checking it out. In my post, I talk about how to start it, and why (to me) it works.
BTW, I believe you asked me a question some time back (in a reply to a post of mine), and I answered much later - don't know if you saw it. If you'd like, please email me and I'll take the time to look it up. (I'd do it right now, but the second I get off the "compose" page, I seem to lose everything I've written.)
Creating a Life Together, by Earthhaven resident Diana Leafe Christian, has a great chapter on just what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful communities. Unfortunately, my copy's loaned out, so I can't give a synopsis, but anyone seriously interested in building a community would be well served by reading it.
Publisher's blurb:
My wife and I have been researching intentional communities and we found Creating a Life Together as the best source regarding the practical problems of ICs. The bad news is that, according to Diana, something like 90% of ICs fail. Based on our experience with ICs and our research, we've decided to take a different path to building community.
The whole IC dynamic will change if energy gets very expensive or is rationed/unavailable. One of the main points of the November Washington Post Earthaven profile is how cheap energy allows us to avoid dealing with each other. Most people take advantage of this freedom as much as possible. Some of us dabble with ICs while it is fun and novel but we have the option of going back to mainstream living if we wish. It is not too difficult to envision a future where it is easier to work out your differences with your community than it is to pick up and move on.
I agree that expensive energy will reduce mobility, but I don't believe any significant portion of Americans will live in ICs. Apart from long standing cultural conditioning, I believe there's a self-selected genetic component to America's peculiar focus on individuality, read Peter Whybrow, M.D.'s American Mania: When More Is Not Enough.
Life: I can't resist these quizzes. I got a 2- he says I am too laid back.
The Mennonites in Belize have high birth rates and suffer from the same problem as the Amish in America. They are running out of land to farm and the farms they have keep getting divided up smaller and smaller. So, no they are not an example of a successful self-sufficient agrarian community. They are headed for a population crash and dieoff just like everyone else.
To all members of TOD:
I have started a new blog: almostselfsufficient.blogspot.com, at which I intend to chronicle our experience in attempting to be as self sufficient in food production as possible. Too many harsh exchanges have occured on this sight - we all have more important contributions to make.
I would very much appreciate any advice, comments, or suggestions from people who might be knowledgable about organic farming, animal husbandry, and preserving food, among other endeavors involved in our attempt to be more than "almost self-sufficient"
Thanks
Greg
very excellent! best of luck to you... at least you could make it a clickable link: http://almostselfsufficient.blogspot.com
To tell you how not with it I am, I did not recognize the initials JHK so I trotted over thinking I was going to be looking at a new book or technical article. Well....that was a shock....
It is so, so sad that one of the most well known spokespeople on the issue of oil depletion happens to be James Howard Kunstler, who was on the attack against the American way of living even when energy was cheap. Kunstler’s “gonzo” writing style could not be more mismatched to what is a very complex and technical issue. He baits for a fight with almost every sentence. He sinks into political related fights that have very little of little interest to those who are truly interested in the larger issue of energy (who believes that the outcome of the next election will change the physics and geology of energy? Who? He does turn a good phrase sometimes though, “Obamanation and Billary” should be picked up by the Repubs as a great, cheap way to slander the Dems)
If you go to the column linked thinking it will be about topsoil, biofuels, or the more complex issues surrounding ethanol in particular or biofuel in general, you will be very disappointed. What you will get is the normal wild eyed attack on alternative proposed to reduce energy, converting those who actually concerned about this issue and trying to actually do something in the labs and shops into the enemy. What the opponents of change cannot do to stop the alternatives Kunstler tries to do for them. If you want real discussion of the bio fuel technical issues, go to the R.R. links instead.
It was Robert Rapier who demonstrated to many that ethanol is a bad choice. Question: Does that mean all bio-fuel is a bad choice? I once felt that way. That the concept of bio-fuel was essentially a “fuel switching operation, converting valuable natural gas based fertilizer into a liquid fuel.
I am now in the process of reevaluation. The possibility of very efficient farming to avoid massive topsoil loss (and let’s be honest, much topsoil is lost not because of farming, but because of careless wasteful large scale factory style farming, in which little effort is made at saving water, fertilize or topsoil, these costs are simply “externalized” or written off)
I am interested in algae, something I never gave a damm about before. And the prospect of bio-butanol to me holds great promise if done carefully (who will begin the research comparing the topsoil loss, water use and fertilizer needs of sugar beet and other crops compared to corn, so that we can find out what the best input crop/material is? That would be more useful that Kunstler’s constant wailing sound. Who will study the saving in infrastructure change by using a 4-carbon alcohol (butanol), who will see that bio-fuel is about much, much more than just ethanol? There is much to be done.
In closing, let me say one more thing. The car. The hated car. the filthy, polluting “chokin’ smokin’ automobile. The devil’s chariot. Guess what.
It ain’t going anywhere. It just ain’t. Sorry. That’s the facts of life. It was supposedly hated when it was born, attempts were made to abort it at conception, and then kill it in it’s crib. They failed, and with each passing decade, it’s strength has grown. It is like a virus, wherever it takes root, it has grown. It will feed off whatever it can find, and fill every corner of it’s environment. The constant scream “the car, the car, the car must die!!”, only serves to undercut the real intellectual message and authority of those concerned about energy issues. Energy is about more than “the car!”
In the 1970’s energy crisis, President Jimmy Carter once proposed a legal restriction on recreational boating to reduce fuel consumption. The White House was hit with what to that time was the biggest letter writing phone campaign in history, dwarfing even the volume of communications against the war in Vietnam, abortion, or gun control issues. And that was over recreational boating. So just try to force people out of their car. The will fight. Viciously. Politically. Financially. You had best spend your efforts on trying to improve efficiency instead, reduce the waste of the American consumer society.
Oh, and one more thing. Put Kunstler on the back burner and let him stew for a while. He enjoys it.
Roger Conner
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom.
Roger: Is there any chance you could do a post of your findings on bio-butanol? You have posted on this topic but I feel I'm missing elements of the picture. I would like a better sense of what you see as the positives and any potential negatives?
Cheers!
new account,
Below is an extraction from a post I did at TOD Canada, in relation to their use of anaerobic digesters, which are also used in bio-butanol production.
(big disclaimer: again I want to express my debt to R.R., Robert Rapier for putting me on the bio-butanol path. It was his first post here on the subject and his i-r squared blog {linked below} that caused me to begin studying this option. Great contribution by R.R. to the whole biofuel discussion and before Dupont/BP announced their sudden interest in this fuel! Thanks again....
If we are going to to bio fuels, there is a more promising path:
Butanol, the 4 carbon alcohol that can be made from sugar beets, or any plant with sugar/starch content including cheap, easy to grow crops and other plant waste that can be raised easily in northern climes. Butanol uses a bacterium instead of yeast, the well known and long isolated Clostridium_acetobutylicum, used since WWI. It is processed by Anaerobic digestion using this bacterium in much the same that brewers use yeast.
It is bio-butanol’s advantage as a finished fuel that is most impressive.
Butanol can be mixed with gasoline without modification or run straight in the place of gasoline with no modification to infrastructure, and will mix with ethanol in the same way that gasoline can. DuPont Chemical Corp and BP have joined in a major partnership to develop and sell bio-butanol in the British market, hopefully to be followed by other markets.
http://www2.dupont.com/Biofuels/en_US/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Butanol
http://www.greencarcongress.com/biobutanol/index.html
http://www.butanol.com/
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/bio-butanol.html
The bug that makes it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_acetobutylicum
http://www.epa.gov/biotech_rule/pubs/fra/fra003.htm
(Post script: Since I first began investigation of bio-butanol, I have had extensive discussions with a mirobiologist who assures me this alcohol is easy to produce, his view was "I can make this crap in a backyard shed."
The questions involve the amount of output that can be achieved as a percent of input crop, and of course, the same questions that are important in any bio-fuel-the amount of soil, water and fertilizer needed to produce the crop that will produce the fuel. As a finished product, butanol is a dream in a gasoline based society, and it has more flexibility on raw materials used to make it, but how would using waste crop, diary whey, etc (all of which can be used) affect output? The improvements in output of Butanol as a percent of the reaction (compared to acetone/ethanol, which is also produced in the reaction) is promising, and we must recall that there is a market for acetone and ethanol! Either way, since the Dupont/BP announcement, and other developments, the buzz about bio-butanol is beginning to pick up fast....as Vinod Khosla would say, it's gaining "trajectory" :-)
Roger Conner
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom.
I see BP/Dupont claim they can go the cellulosic route with cornstalks
http://www.dupont.com/ag/news/releases/BP_DuPont_Fact_Sheet_Biobutanol.p...
but butanol still has the EROEI lowering fermentation step. Perhaps there is no feasible non-aqueous (dry) and microbe-free path to biobutanol. No info either on whether spillages of clostridium culture are hazardous.
Boof said,
"No info either on whether spillages of clostridium culture are hazardous."
Ah, but we have that info, per the EPA,
http://www.epa.gov/biotech_rule/pubs/fra/fra003.htm
clostridium culture is essentially risk free, and in fact is less dangerous than a home composting pile, which has on very rare occasion been given as the cause of bacterial spread (the news usually goes wild and calls it "flesh eating virus"). Clostridium is actually present in every foot of topsoil naturally.
On the cellulosic route, yes, it can be done, but in a long very involved technical report I have in PDF format, research done by the South Africans demonstrated that this is not easy, and their idea of getting the industry running on sugar beet and diary whey seems to be the way to go, and then experiment outward from there. BP/Dupont seem to be going exactly this route themselves. The South African research, without the benefit of newer methods and higher producing strains of clostridium proved butanol easily producable on scale, but not at a price that could compete with the then current oil price (about $18 to $22 a barrel) The issue that is still of most concern to me is nitrogen input for sugar beet production and if sugar beet is the absolute best alternative (it is a very tough plant and grows well in the North)
RC
Remember we are only one cubic mile from freedom.
RC wrote: "Remember we are only one cubic mile from freedom."
What does that mean?
-POP
Hi POP,
Thanks and I believe Roger is referring to this graphic:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/4820/ncmo01, which was also re-posted on TOD (if you do a search, you can probably find it linked here, as well).
Roger also previously explains how his views changed. Personally, I found the graphic to give pretty much the opposite message than the one Roger takes home from it. It's the fine print that shows the big numbers.
Me, too. IMVHO, most people are lousy at visualizing volumes.
I'm reminded of my parents, who had to buy topsoil for their yard when they built their new house. One cubic yard of topsoil doesn't sound like much. Then it was delivered....
Me, three. Plus, if that cubic mile can't easily be replaced it really doesn't matter what size it is. It could be one cubic inch.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2186
As Aniya points out, I have since done several long posts on why this was such a revelation to me....I had spent my life going back to the 1970's as a high school student believing that the amount of oil the world consumed must have been much, much greater than 1 cubic mile per year (I would have guessed closer to 50, given the staggering scale of the oil industry, the world girdling drilling operations (Saudi Arabia, North Sea, Mexico, U.S and Canada, etc.
The knowledge that we were talking about having to find replacement for only one cubic mile of oil per year, given the scale of the earth, the amount of sunlight that falls on it every second, the wind that moves on it, the bacterial action at work on the planet etc., simply reduced "one cubic mile" to
insignificance as a technical issue....I am becoming more convinced that it a "habitual" issue, i.e., we have allowed ourselves to become fixated on oil more out of habit than any technical need....it is simply what we started with as an industrial culture, and what we grew up infrastructure around, and now we are too lazy too change...but, if we choose, it is not that much oil to replace, and oil is not nearly as good as it's made out to be....khebab's post visualizing for me that oil was "the tiny man behind the curtain" with a big pretentious machine around him was priceless. Oil. It really is the Wizard, but don't look behind the curtain....:-)
RC
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
RC,
I like to ask people how many gallons are in a cubic foot. The answer I get is usually 2 or 3. That was my original guess until I look it up.
The answer is 7.48.
When you look at a gallon milk jug, and mentally compare it to a cubic foot box, it almost looks impossible to fit 7.5 gallon jugs into the box.
So I'm with Aniya on this one.
I think a cubic mile is HUGE!
I really enjoy reading your posts. Thanks.
Wow, that is mind blowing. I even double checked it on google to make sure that wasn't a typo.
1 cubic foot is 7.48 gallons. Guess we really are that bad at estimating volume.
We need Carl Sagan to put this in perspective.
1 cubic mile is 2 million olympic swimming pools.
1 cubic mile of oil would fill the state of Rhode Island 3 feet 4 inches deep.
1 cubic mile would fill 4000 empire state buildings.
1 cubic mile is big.
I despise cars and the society they have created. Yet, I own two (trucks) and couldn't live my lifestyle without them.
Some people actually like the darned things.
You will get peoples' cars when you pry the steering wheel from their cold, dead hands.
You can't present people with a society that requires 99% of them to own a vehicle, then try to convince them not to drive. Step one has to be eliminating the need to own a vehicle. Even one. Make it inconvient (for example, very limited parking, narrow secondary streets only, very few places to refuel) to own one, and drop-dead easy to do without one. Then let the fact that a motor vehicle is expensive to own and operate make it seem a luxury item with limited practical use.
There is just no way that is going to happen in the timeframe we have left.
I don't take Kunstler seriously. I like his writing style. I read and recommended "The Long Emergency" to various friends because he covers a lot of relevant issues. But he doesn't have workable solutions.
Behind all the bluster and fanciful rhetoric he basically advocates living in small towns where people can walk around. I think that is a huge part of the answer of the answer to PO.