ALJAZEERA When President Barack Obama gave a major policy speech on reducing greenhouse gases last June, he didn’t once mention ethanol, an alcohol-based fuel distilled from fermented corn. Biofuels in general — which are extracted from plant or animal matter — received a brief, passing reference.
But when the Iowa political caucuses were on the horizon in 2007, then–presidential candidate Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when former President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country “stronger, cleaner and more secure.”
But the ethanol era has proved far more damaging to the environment than politicians said and much worse than the government admits today, an Associated Press investigation found. As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conserved land, destroyed habitats and polluted water supplies… (more)
