Ethanol: driving yourself to an early grave

I have been a long-term sceptic of ethanol as a proclaimed panacea to our car emission woes, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to read this article confirming my bias.

"Ethanol is being promoted as a clean and renewable fuel that will reduce global warming and air pollution," said Jacobson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "But our results show that a high blend of ethanol poses an equal or greater risk to public health than gasoline, which already causes significant health damage."...

..."In our study, E85 increased ozone-related mortalities in the United States by about 200 deaths per year compared to gasoline, with about 120 of those deaths occurring in Los Angeles," Jacobson said. "These mortality rates represent an increase of about 4 percent in the U.S. and 9 percent in Los Angeles above the projected ozone-related death rates for gasoline-fueled vehicles in 2020."

So, ethanol is not the magic bullet that farming lobby groups (corn in America, sugar cane and wheat here) paint it as. I think things like this highlight some of the problems when it comes to policy solutions for global warming.

When we lose focus on reducing emissions full stop, we may very well end up with a cure that is worse than the disease. Similar to carbon-offsetting, some of the ideas we are now entertaining are simply replacing one problematic material with another. If we start out with small quantities, the trade off doesn't seem so bad, but it's only a matter of time until we're faced with bigger problems

A similar dynamic is at play with the notion of cloud seeding to increase the density of clouds, thus reflecting heat and sunlight away from earth. Great, we reduce the temperature, but then we get global dimming, an equally serious problem.

Now, I'm not saying ethanol is out and out a baddie, however. There is a point where driving is largely unavoidable, and cars have to run on something. However, we are not at that point yet - nowhere even close to it - and I think things like this illustrate the futility of thinking that the way we live won't have to change, to do something about global warming.

I don't know if our lives will have to change to save humanity, so to speak, but I think most people want a little more than that. Our lives will have to change to keep the environment remotely like it is now, and that means less driving for a start.