Having thus argued that no one should want to be free of oil-cartel domination, Bryce launches an extended attack on corn ethanol. This is understandable. The 8 billion gallons of ethanol the U.S. produced in 2007 (at a cost to taxpayers of $4 billion in blender subsidies) cost OPEC $20 billion in revenues from reduced American oil-sales volume. Worse yet, in combination with Brazilian and other foreign biofuel efforts, the ethanol program has been responsible for cutting global oil prices by $13 per barrel compared to what they would otherwise be, according to Merrill Lynch analysis published in the Wall Street Journal in March. Now thats a serious matter. As a result of this $13 per barrel price erosion, ethanol cost the cartel $170 billion in global revenues this year, with $65 billion in potential collections lost in the U.S. alone. No wonder that Bryce (along with other OPEC spokesmen such as Hugo Chavez and the Saudi oil minister) is upset. And if you dont like the fact that $85 billion of your money is not going to OPEC, then you should be upset about the ethanol program, too.
Not surprisingly, Bryce fails to bring up the issue of OPEC financial losses in decrying ethanol. Instead, he quotes David Pimentel, an insect ecologist from Cornell, who has published analyses claiming that it takes more energy to make ethanol than the final fuel product delivers.
Pimentel is a Mathusian zealot who opposes all forms of modern agriculture, including fertilizer use, irrigation, and pesticides and his anti-ethanol analyses have been refuted repeatedly in the refereed scientific literature. The real issue respecting energy independence is not how much energy it takes to make a fuel, but how much petroleum is required, and (as A. Farrell et al. showed in Science in 2006) it takes more than ten times as much petroleum to refine a given quantity of oil into gasoline as is needed to produce the equivalent BTU value in corn ethanol. Moreover, Pimentels solution for remedying Americas 60-percent dependence upon foreign oil is to cut the nations population by 200 million people, a goal he proposes to accomplish by ending all immigration and imposing state-run population control programs. Indeed, Pimentel is a member of the Board of the Carrying Capacity Network, an ultra-Malthusian group whose chairman is the self-professed white separatist Virginia Abernethy. Yet the supposedly anti-racist Bryce freely quotes Pimentel as a bona fide authority.
Beyond such crank citations, Bryce indulges in wild demagoguery of his own, chanting scam and Big Corn at every turn. His bete noire is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), which he portrays as a huge conspiratorial monopoly that completely dominates the ethanol industry. Actually, ADM is not even the largest American producer of ethanol. That honor goes to POET, a farmer-financed corporation with an output of 1.2 billion gallons per year, which is now building the first commercial cellulosic-ethanol plants. The fact that Bryces book fails to mention POET speaks volumes about his credentials like a defense-policy expert who is unacquainted with the existence of the U.S. Army.
Having drawn a picture of the menacing ADM-driven Big Corn ethanol scam, Bryce proceeds to expose how this octopus is corrupting the American political system. He cites data proving that, between 1989 and 2006, ADM was the 85th-largest political donor in the U.S. (I am not making this up.) If that doesnt scare you, consider this: over the 16-year period in question, ADM contributions to its top recipient, Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin totaled $57,350, while GOP Illinois congressman Dennis Hastert raked in some $38,500 with average ADM yearly contributions to the two of them coming to $3,584 and $2,406, respectively! (Again, I am not making this up.)
OPECs Vertical Monopoly
As a loyal devotee of the oil cartel, the last thing Bryce wants is to do is describe how biofuels have weakened OPECs vertical monopoly on transportation fuel and how we might weaken it further. This could be done forcefully, by having the U.S. Congress pass a law requiring that any new car sold in the U.S. be flex-fueled, i.e., able to run on any combination of gasoline, ethanol, or methanol. NRO contributor Cliff May has previously described how this flex-fuel mandate would work, as have I. Within three years of making flex fuel vehicles (FFVs) the industry standard, there would be 50 million cars on U.S. roads capable of running on methanol, ethanol, and gasoline and hundreds of millions more worldwide. By forcing gasoline to compete everywhere against alcohol fuels made all over the world, from a number of diverse sources, FFVs would destroy the vertical monopoly of the oil cartel, forcing prices down to around $50 per barrel and eventually down further, as alcohol-fuel production technology advances.
The FFV strategy for achieving an open-source fuel market is exactly the policy we need to beat the oil cartel, and it has been well-known as a policy alternative since it was first published in an article I wrote for The American Enterprise in 2006. Since Bryce is unable to refute it, he chooses not to mention it. This is certainly a disservice to his readers, but Bryce seems most interested in service to OPEC.
I was scheduled to debate Bryce in Washington, D.C., last month, but he backed out. I did manage to corner him, though, on Michael Medveds nationally syndicated radio show. His responses there were of considerable clinical interest: hard pressed, he fell back on the argument that biofuels should be shunned because they threaten to lower the price of oil, and thus contribute to economic growth, particularly in the third world, and so lead to global warming. He went on to cite Tim Searchinger, an Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) attorney who opposes biofuels for this reason. The EDF, it should be noted, is the organization whose proudest achievement has been the global ban on the pesticide DDT, an action which has caused the deaths of tens of millions of Africans through otherwise preventable malaria.
Bryce, a long time stringer for the oil industry funded Institute for Energy Research, has more recently become a regular contributor to Alexander Cockburns anti-American left fascist magazine Counterpunch. There, Bryce has written a series of diatribes attacking ethanol and denouncing Israel. Heres a sample of Bryce on the latter subject: Israel is not content with its occupation and total military domination of Palestine. No, Israel has proven that it wants to assure the Palestinians continue to live in the most dire poverty. . . . etc., etc. Bryces views on the Mideast are instructive in clarifying the source of his opposition to ethanol.
Nevertheless, some conservatives hail Bryce because of his opposition to U.S. corn-ethanol subsidies. Such people need to take a hard look at the broader picture and reconsider their views. The core issue is not a 51 cents per gallon fuel production subsidy although as Adam Smith himself showed by his support for British sail cloth subsidies in The Wealth of Nations, maintaining industries necessary for national defense should be supported by all who would maintain the free-enterprise system. After all, if you cant defend your freedom, you wont have free enterprise for long.
Nor is about abstract free-market principles. The oil business is not a free market. It is an oligopoly controlled by a cartel which is engaged in an active conspiracy against the free market. The flex-fuel standard Bryce opposes would help defeat that conspiracy. As Adam Smith and the great free-market economist F. A. Hayek both argued, government action to break such anti-market conspiracies is entirely appropriate.
That said, the central issue goes well beyond that: it is about who is going to control the world, on what principles, and to what ends.
As the case of Bryce demonstrates, Islamists and Malthusians share a common interest in keeping oil prices high. They have more in common than that. They are alternate sides of the same coin the cult of human sacrifice. One is theistic, the other atheistic, but their fundamental program is the same: crush individual liberty, thwart human initiative, and constrain human aspirations to maintain a narrowly conceived fixed order, whether economic or religious. In both systems, tyranny is the natural political expression.
For the defeatist Bryce, the world of Islamist supremacy, enriched by OPECs control of humanitys fuel supply, and justified by Malthusian ideology demanding the sacrifice of many in order to fulfill the designs of a few, is acceptable. For the defeatist Bryce, the looting of the American economy of hundreds of billions of dollars per year to finance Islamist takeovers of corporations, media organizations, and ultimately, political systems, throughout the Western world is acceptable. It is not acceptable to me, nor do I believe that it is in any way acceptable to the American people.
Bryce has chosen to face Saudi Arabia and grovel. That is his right. But if the rest of us want to preserve the last best hope of mankind, we need to try something else.
Nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and author of Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil.
"...corn used for ethanol is not irrigated."
True?
"And if you dont like the fact that $85 billion of your money is not going to OPEC, then you should be upset about the ethanol program, too."
Not the only reason to be upset about the ethanol BOHICA.
"The real issue respecting energy independence is not how much energy it takes to make a fuel, but how much petroleum is required..."
I strenuously disagree. It is the "real issue" only if you look at it from one perspective: keeping money out of the hands of the Saudis.
"As a loyal devotee of the oil cartel, the last thing Bryce wants is to do is describe how biofuels have weakened OPECs vertical monopoly on transportation fuel..."
I think this more than a little optimistic.
"This could be done forcefully, by having the U.S. Congress pass a law requiring that any new car sold in the U.S. be flex-fueled, i.e., able to run on any combination of gasoline, ethanol, or methanol."
Flex-fuel may be a good idea. Making a federal case of it is not.
"The core issue is not a 51 cents per gallon fuel production subsidy"
Jeebus. What a screw-job for everybody not growing corn but still paying taxes. That is a pretty serious core issue, IMO.
"...Adam Smith himself showed by his support for British sail cloth subsidies in The Wealth of Nations, maintaining industries necessary for national defense should be supported by all who would maintain the free-enterprise system."
Just as every child in a classroom is special, every industry is "vital" for our national defense.