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Editor's ViewpointMeditations Of A Minnesota Mossback |
No Free Lunch.No Quick Fix.
The first book I ever read by myself was "Angus and the Ducks." I can remember checking it out from the library from Mrs. Corner, the librarian, who wore a chain on her glasses.
Fourteen years later, Mrs. Corner became my first boss when I was hired as a page to shelve books at the public library. Ah, Angus and I go way back, but there have been a lot of great books - and authors - since then.
One of the all-time greats was - and still is - Robert (Bob) Heinlein. I had the privilege of meeting Bob and his wife, Ginny, back in 1984 at an L5 conference in San Francisco.
(L4 and L5 are points just outside the Moon's orbit, where the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Moon is at equilibrium - a perfect location for a permanent space station, which was what L5 was after.)
Besides being an interesting guy, Heinlein was a true visionary. He is credited with first imagining a number of things we now take for granted - the waterbed, the microwave, and the cell phone among them.
One of his brainchildren is the phrase, TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"), made famous in his book, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress."
To Heinlein, who studied engineering and mathematics at UCLA, TANSTAAFL meant that the system under consideration is "closed": that is, each part of the system - be it a source of matter, energy, light, or, as in this case, lunch - has a real cost associated with it.
It's true. The Earth has limited quantities of almost everything, from polar bears to crude oil. Unlike in sci-fi books where quirky technological gizmos often save the day, easy solutions to today's problems are hard to come by. When the polar bears disappear, there will be no magic lamp to rub.
One finds little printed discussion of the downside of one of the most currently popular "solutions" to the energy crisis - that of using corn to produce ethanol.
President Bush has called for U.S. production of ethanol to reach 35 billion gallons per year by 2017. In view of considerable subsidies the feds are forking over, everybody is planting corn (and, in recent developments, demanding higher subsidies).
It seems that once more we must beware the "easy" solution.
In a study released a week ago, the National Research Council concluded that the federal government, in its frenzy to get on the biofuel wagon, may not have given "appropriate attention" to the long-range effects of increased production of corn-based ethanol on our water supply.
Why should this concern us?
Because an increase in the planting of corn will surely lead to both an increase in surface water pollution and depletion of the aquifers from which many Americans, including those in Hugo, Centerville and Lino Lakes, draw much of our water. Aquifers - which lie beneath the surface of the ground - provide 40 percent of the fresh water used in the U.S.
The EPA says that agriculture is the single largest nonpoint source polluter of surface waters. According to recent studies, fertilizer runoff has once again been fingered as the likely culprit in frog deformities; excess nitrogen is a cause of the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico; and according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's recent update, phosphorus is the biggest contributor to the increase in the number of impaired lakes, streams and rivers in Minnesota, all of which recharge our aquifers.
Agriculture and lawn fertilizers are a major contributor to groundwater contamination and wetlands degradation. To be fair, we all need food - and we depend on farmers to produce it efficiently. But we don't eat the corn planted for biofuels.
Although it may be easier to blame 3M, once the aquifers aren't fit to drink, we'll all die of thirst before we finish pointing fingers.
The report says it isn't clear that these problems will happen everywhere: it depends on what is planted where, and where the biorefining takes place. A 100-million-gallon-per-year biorefinery will use as much water as a town of 5,000 people.
But aquifers in the U.S. are already stressed. The Ogallala aquifer, from which people from west Texas to Wyoming draw their water, has seen a decline in the water table of 100 feet since the 1940s - 40 feet within a 16-year period, in one area. What's really scary is that the first well was drilled into the Ogallala in 1911 - and this aquifer supplies 70 percent of the water used in Kansas.
For over 200 days, the Yellow River in China failed to reach the ocean due to groundwater depletion. The Colorado River often falls short of the Pacific. Mexico City is sinking because of aquifer overpumping.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Quick Fix. The fact that increased biofuel production is likely to cause fresh water shortages should alarm us all.
One thing is certain: I can always ride my bike to work, but I can't quench my thirst with a gallon of ethanol.