Op-ed: N.J., EPA must change stance on ethanol
Feeding our cars vs. feeding ourselves. Image via brown.osu.edu.
Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club this weekend urged New Jersey to opt out of a federal ethanol fuel mixture mandate.
His argument: The high cost of food is directly related to the nation’s food-based fuel initiatives, which should be scaled back to address that. (Corn prices have doubled in the last two years, and prices for eggs, milk, beef, chicken and wheat have grown with them.) Ethanol production also causes environmental harm, he says.
But an energy bill, in December, required 9 billion gallons of ethanol to be blended into gasoline this year and more in the future. States can opt out of that mandate, and Tittel wants New Jersey to be one of them. He also wants the EPA to restructure its rules on this issue. From his article:
Fortunately, Congress recognized that diverting more than 30 percent of our corn crops and vegetable oils into fuel supplies could affect food prices. It gave states the power to ask the EPA to restructure these mandates.
We at the Sierra Club believe New Jersey should join California in seeking a waiver on reformulating state gasoline supplies with ethanol. New Jersey would meet the same environmental standards, but without using ethanol.
Right now, with thousands of families struggling to make ends meet, it makes little sense to artificially inflate the price of food. We need to use energy efficiency and truly clean technologies, such as wind, solar and geothermal energy, to address our energy and global-warming challenges. Americans shouldn’t be steered toward false choices, such as ethanol, that hurt us more than they help us.
In light of these urgent economic and environmental issues, New Jerseyans must ask Gov. Jon Corzine to tell the EPA to restructure the state’s food-to-fuel mandates and give it a waiver on using ethanol.
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
NJ is the one of the most expensive places to live. I would love to see E85 here in NJ. I would rather pay for better cleaner fuel then keep paying more for regular gas. This can help even in the DMV inspection stations since it burns cleaner more cars would pass the emissions test. Also the environment would also benefit from it a lot. Now the big one we wont have to buy as much oil form the enemy.