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Yahoo!WASHINGTON — In a dizzying about-face, the White House announced that the president will be signing the Ban Biofuels Act tomorrow.
His case has come to represent Acres of corn now to be used for feeding people, rather than being converted to car and truck fuel. (JIM MEDIA)
The controversial legislation was pushed through Congress by newly elected Democrats uncharacteristically willing to stand up to big agribusiness, bolstered by intense public pressure in part due to the efforts of international organizations like Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network.
The shift was cheered by environmental activists as well as average Americans worn down by the steep rise in food prices. “Vegetable oil and corn are for feeding people, not cars,” said Elizabeth Johnson, a hospital worker and mother of three, at yesterday’s demonstration outside Capitol Hill. “There was only so much more we could keep paying.”
Six nationwide protests over the last four months had prepared the terrain for the bill’s success, according to Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center, who said that national polls indicate a sharp decrease in public approval of biofuels and increased concern about global warming. “The public sees the use of biofuels as profoundly irresponsible both environmentally and socially,” Kohut said.
He added that recent investigative reporting on the effects of biofuels, including one piece in the New York Times and several on C.N.N., had been key in sparking public outrage. “Television and print journalism haven’t done this type of reporting for years,” Kohut said. “We found that when people weren’t barraged with disinformation, they developed a much sharper analysis of the situation.”
In addition to turning off the tap on plant-based petrol, the Ban Biofuels Act sets out an ambitious plan of shifting over $10 billion in annual direct and indirect subsidies from oil companies to the construction of wind farms in rural areas of Texas, Kansas and Wyoming.
“One of the great things about the act is that it mandates the building of transmission lines, which has been a big infrastructural hurdle to getting renewable energy on track in the United States,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a press conference yesterday. In acknowledging her failure in the past to support alternative fuels in a meaningful way, Pelosi credited activists for her increased understanding of the need for renewable energy.
Delivering yet another jolt to Republicans, House Democrats tacked onto the act a mandatory transition of cropland from chemical-intensive “conventional” farming to chemical-free organic cultivation on all acreage that receives subsidy payments from the federal government. “We’ve been getting a lot of heat from our constituents on this issue,” explained Rep. Daniel Seals, Democrat of Illinois. “We had to do something and now was the time.”
Top executives from Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland rushed to the Capitol late last night for an emergency closed-door session with the vice president. According to an aide who attended the meeting, negotiations quickly unraveled when congressional leaders sent a memo announcing they would refuse all future campaign contributions from the powerful firms.
Today the stock of both corporations registered their sharpest single-day drop on record at the Dow. Neither company would return calls for comment.
International response has been mixed. “I must admit, no one saw this coming,” said a World Bank official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’ve all known there were big problems with our subsidies for biofuel crops in developing countries, especially as they encroached on other crops, and on native ecosystems. We were examining that. We just never expected to be pushed on it by U.S. officials.”
Analysts at the World Bank predict that the legislation will have a ripple effect, eventually easing pressure on the remaining rainforests.
“If the demand for biofuels drops, then there’s far less incentive to clear-cut native forests,” explained a spokesperson from Friends of the Earth Indonesia, also known as Walhí. “This is what the people in the rainforest have been fighting for for years.”
The spokesperson added that the struggle would not be over until similar controls are implemented by governments around the globe. “Ecological destruction is a systemic problem, it’s not just one company or one place. The only way we’ll have real justice is if those who prosper from exploitation have nowhere else to go, and have to go somewhere else.”
clean low waste nuclear fuel - that is the answere…even in the future to travel as individual , as an individual car user
Comment on November 13, 2008 12:54 pm