[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 69 (Tuesday, April 29, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3469-S3472]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            BIOFUEL MANDATES

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we are in the midst of global food 
difficulties. You have been seeing it on television, and it is the 
result of decades of misguided environment and energy policies. As 
worldwide food availability decreases and prices continue to skyrocket, 
decades of ill-conceived planning by politicians and bureaucrats right 
here in Washington, afraid of expanding our energy supplies, are now 
bearing ugly fruit.
  American families and the international community continue to suffer 
from these misguided policies, and Washington has to take the first 
step to begin to address these problems. I think we know what the 
problem is right now. We have mandated certain things to take place in 
terms of our fuels, it has had a result of increasing prices of food, 
but it has another unintended consequence; that is, it is diverting the 
use of corn to go to fuel as opposed to food.
  Now, I am here today to demand two dramatic and necessary actions to 
help mitigate our current biofuel policy blunder. I have always 
supported all forms of energy, including biofuels, for a diverse and 
stable energy mix, but currently policy has skewed common sense and 
violated the principles of sound energy policy.
  These effects are being felt in my home State of Oklahoma, where I am 
hearing concerns regarding ethanol.

[[Page S3470]]

Scott Dewald, with the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association, described one 
aspect of biofuel's unintended consequences on April 28. He said:

       Cow-calf producers all the way to the feeding sector are 
     feeling the pinch of high corn prices. Today's biofuels 
     policies have completely ignored the costs to the 
     livestock sector.

  Now, first, Congress has to revisit the recently enacted biofuel 
mandate, which can only be described as the most expansive biofuel 
mandate in our Nation's history. The mandates were part of last 
year's--it was December it was taken up--Energy Independence and 
Security Act of 2007. Congress has to have the courage to address this 
issue and to address it now, to recognize we made a mistake in 
December.
  Second, the EPA--this is something people are not aware of, even 
though this is mandated. EPA has the Congressionally-given authority to 
waive all or a portion of these food-to-fuel mandates as part of its 
rulemaking process. The EPA has to thoroughly review all the options to 
alleviate the food and fuel disruption of the 2007 Energy bill.
  A lot of people do not realize and did not think--at the time they 
thought, well, this is very helpful to the corn States. We all want to 
help the corn States. My State of Oklahoma also grows corn. But they 
did not think about the unintended consequences of the cost of all fuel 
and everything you see on the shelves in the grocery store.
  Last summer, when I offered an amendment to the Energy bill that 
would have put in place a stocks-to-use mechanism to provide the EPA 
Administrator more flexibility in waiver authority in the instance of 
crop shortages, I was told by the majority whip my amendment was not 
necessary.
  Incidentally, The Hill newspaper reported yesterday the same majority 
whip who said my amendment was not necessary now acknowledges that:

       U.S. ethanol policies may be partly to blame for a global 
     food crisis threatening to leave millions hungry.

  I am glad to have his support in this concern I am expressing today. 
During the 2007 floor debate, he said:

       There is already a waiver provision in the bill that offers 
     protection to consumers if corn prices or availability become 
     unsustainable.

  Last June when I offered this amendment, corn was trading at $3.70 a 
bushel. Less than a year later, corn is now trading at $6 a bushel. 
Corn prices and availability are now unsustainable. I ask my colleagues 
who opposed my amendment to now join me in calling for the EPA to 
exercise its waiver authority provided in the underlying bill.
  I am working with my colleague from Texas, Senator Kay Bailey 
Hutchison, to urge the EPA to take action. Senator Hutchison also 
announced she is introducing legislation that will freeze the biofuel 
mandate at current levels, instead of steadily increasing it through 
2022.
  Senator Hutchison correctly noted this is a commonsense measure that 
will reduce pressure on global food prices and restore balance to 
America's energy policy. The whole world is now reacting to the 
consequences of overzealous biofuel mandates.
  While I supported realistic mandates in the past, I continue to 
support the development of cellulosic ethanol. I was one of eight 
Senators who voted against the 2007 Energy bill, with its restrictive 
biofuel mandates, last December.
  On Tuesday, December 4, I joined with several Senators, including 
Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, Ben Cardin, Bernie Sanders, 
and Susan Collins, in writing a letter to the President to:

     . . . urge the administration to carefully evaluate and 
     respond to unintended public health and safety risks that 
     could result from the increased use of ethanol as a general 
     purpose transportation fuel.

  The letter noted the administration had called for a national effort 
to reduce consumers' demand for gasoline by 20 percent in 10 years, in 
part through increased use of renewable transportation fuels such as 
ethanol. Sadly, these onerous biofuel mandates, which would 
significantly increase renewable fuel use, particularly the use of 
ethanol over the next two decades, became law.
  Since December, the world has been confronted with irrefutable 
evidence that our current biofuels mandates are having massive and 
potentially life-threatening consequences. Once again, we are reminded 
how restrictive Government mandates and ill-advised bureaucratic 
meddling produce unintended consequences. Trying to centrally manage 
and plan a global food distribution network and economy through clumsy, 
unrealistically high mandates has been a proven failure.
  An April 28 article on our current biofuel mandates in the National 
Review, by Phil Kepren and James Valvo, detailed the mindset of 
bureaucratic planners.

       Each new generation of central planners believes the 
     previous generation wasn't smart enough. Yet central economic 
     planning is forever doomed to failure since the approach 
     itself limits human freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and 
     innovation.

  To put it in other terms, as Ronald Reagan said: ``The more the plans 
fail, the more the planners plan.''

  A large auto manufacturer has erected a billboard for their lineup of 
so-called eco-friendly cars that run on ethanol that is currently being 
prominently displayed not far from the Capitol. This advertisement--I 
saw it yesterday--asks a simple question: ``Why drill for fuel when you 
can grow it?''
  That sounds like a politically correct question, to which the auto 
company's marketing team must have thought was an obvious answer. Let 
me allow world leaders and mainstream media outlets, the UN, and former 
believers in mandated Government standards to further answer the 
billboard's marketing campaign in no uncertain terms; that is, what the 
question is: Why drill for fuel when you can grow it?
  The answer is found in India's Finance Minister's statement he made 
earlier this month. He said:

       When millions of people are going hungry, it's a crime 
     against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels.

  Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said:

       Food prices were raising the specter of famine in certain 
     countries. A conflict is emerging between foodstuffs and fuel 
     . . . with disastrous social conflicts and dubious 
     environmental results.

  The United Kingdom Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has called for a 
reevaluation of biofuels. He said:

       Now that we know that biofuels, intended to promote energy 
     independence and combat climate change, are frequently energy 
     inefficient we need to look closely at the impact on food 
     prices and the environment of different production methods 
     and to ensure we are more selective in our support.

  The Scotsman Brown also noted hunger is:

     the number one threat to public health across the world, 
     responsible for a third of child deaths. Tackling hunger is a 
     moral challenge for each of us.

  The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has 
now called for:

     an investigation into whether the push for biofuels is to 
     blame for rising food prices.

  According to an article in the United Kingdom Register, the EU may:

     cancel its target of requiring 10 percent of petro and diesel 
     to be biofuel by 2020.

  That is what they are doing in the United Kingdom. Now they recognize 
they made a mistake. The article explained:

       Recent weeks have seen riots over food prices in Egypt, 
     Haiti, Indonesia and Mauritania. Rice prices have hit record 
     levels this year and several countries have banned exports. 
     India has renewed a ban on all exports of nonbasmati rice.

  U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned in April that high food 
prices could wipe out progress in reducing poverty and hurt global 
economic growth. The U.N. Secretary-General said:

       This steeply rising price of food has developed into a real 
     global crisis.

  He called for world leaders to meet on an urgent basis. You know, it 
is funny that I have been quoting the United Nations. I am probably the 
biggest critic of the United Nations in this Chamber. But I have also 
been very active over the years in Africa and doing the very thing we 
are trying to do now, to make sure that fewer people starve to death.
  The head of the U.N. world food agency summed up global food 
difficulties this way. He said:

       A silent tsunami which knows no borders is sweeping the 
     world.

  On April 25, the U.N. food agency chief, Jacques Diouf, warned of 
possible civil war in some countries because of global food shortages.

[[Page S3471]]

  I wish to pause a moment and note that some of the rhetoric by the 
United Nations and others may be a bit over the top and prone to hyped 
alarmism. I have taken to this Chamber many times to debunk so-called 
environmental crises and media manipulation of environmental issues.
  I do not want to now be accused of overhyping our current global food 
situation. But please do not let over-the-top rhetoric obscure the fact 
that the world is currently facing a serious biofuel mandates problem 
and needs remedying.
  Ironically, the anti-energy environmental left has spent decades 
worrying over various crises that never seem to materialize. You have 
to give the environmentalists credit, they may finally get their bona 
fide crisis, but alas, it will be one created by the very policies they 
advocated.
  It is kind of interesting because we can recall the environmentalist 
community advocating the use of ethanol and the mandates and then not 
recognizing this creates a greater pollution problem as well as a 
starvation problem.
  The most interesting is the mainstream news outlets have now turned 
on biofuels and, in particular, corn ethanol. Publications that 
normally uncritically parrot the leftwing environmental agenda are now 
among the biggest denouncers of our current biofuel policies.
  The New York Times, for example, has stated:

       Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol 
     made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the 
     government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly 
     resulting in more hungry people around the world this year.
  Time magazine was blunt in an April 7, 2008, article titled ``The 
Clean Energy Scam,'' by reporter Michael Grunwald, who wrote that our 
current policies on corn ethanol are ``environmentally disastrous.'' 
``The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for 
generations--and it's only getting started,'' Grunwald wrote.
  Time magazine also featured Tim Searchinger, a Princeton scholar and 
former Environmental Defense attorney who said:

       People don't want to believe renewable fuels could be bad. 
     But when you realize we're tearing down rain forests that 
     store loads of carbon to grow crops that store much less 
     carbon, it becomes obvious.

  Time magazine also said the rising prices were ``spurring a dramatic 
expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon [rain 
forest] at an increasingly alarming rate.''
  Former CBS newsman Dan Rather has also weighed in. Rather wrote on 
April 27:

       When more acreage is devoted to corn for ethanol, less is 
     available for food production.

  In this case I agree with Dan Rather. He said:

       Here in the United States, food is less often a matter of 
     life and death, but it is putting an additional dangerous 
     strain on families who are already struggling to get by in a 
     faltering economy.

  Rather added:

       Already there are reports of charitable food pantries 
     unable to meet the needs of those they serve.

  The New York Sun put it bluntly about the impact of our policies: 
``Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World.'' That was an 
article on April 21.
  A 2007 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and 
Development concluded that biofuels ``offer a cure [for oil dependency] 
that is worse than the disease.'' Other organizations have weighed in. 
The National Academy of Sciences conducted a study finding corn-based 
ethanol may strain water supplies. The American Lung Association has 
raised air pollution concerns from the burning of ethanol in gasoline. 
Cornell ecology professor David Pimental called our current ethanol 
policy a ``boondoggle.''
  Pimental said:

       It does require 30 [percent] more energy oil equivalents to 
     produce a gallon of ethanol than you actually get out, and it 
     causes a lot of severe environmental problems. This is very 
     significant. It takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce 1 
     gallon of ethanol.

  No one ever talked about that last December.
  Friends of the Earth has urged the UK to abandon its current biofuel 
targets, which I believe they are now doing. Food campaigner Vicky Hird 
from Friends of the Earth said:

       [UK Prime Minister] Gordon Brown is right to be concerned 
     about the impact of biofuels on food prices and the 
     environment. Evidence is growing that they cause more harm 
     than good. Food production must be revolutionized to prevent 
     a global catastrophe.

  Jane Goodall, the internationally famous primate conservationist, 
warned about biofuels and the impact on the rain forests in Asia, 
Africa, and South America:

       We're cutting down forests now to grow sugar cane and palm 
     oil for biofuels.

  She said this in September of last year.
  The group, Clean Air Task Force, recently reported that nearly 12 
million hectares of peat land in Indonesia has been converted to 
accommodate a palm oil plantation. The land was reportedly drained, 
cleared, and burned for conversion to a plantation.
  Even Miles O'Brien of CNN, a man of whom I have been harshly 
critical, and yet a man I consider to be a good friend in spite of our 
honest differences of opinion, and I are together on this issue. He 
reported on CNN on February 21:

       If every last ear of corn in America were used for ethanol, 
     it would reduce our oil consumption by only 7 percent.

  He is right. O'Brien also reported:

       Corn ethanol is not as clean, efficient, or practical as 
     politicians claim.

  I agree with this. I am glad to find something on which my good pilot 
friend and I can agree.
  Lester Brown, who has been dubbed ``the guru of the environmental 
movement,'' has added his voice in opposition to our current biofuels 
policies. Brown cowrote, on April 22:

       It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon 
     Congress to revisit recently enacted Federal mandates 
     requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of 
     biofuels.

  Brown wrote that our current biofuel mandate was ``causing 
environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis.''
  Brown continued:

       Turning one-fourth of our corn into fuel is affecting 
     global food prices. U.S. food prices are rising in twice the 
     rate of inflation, hitting the pocketbook of lower income 
     Americans and people living on fixed incomes.
       America must stop contributing to food price inflation 
     through mandates that force us to use food to feed our cars 
     instead of to feed people.

  Brown concluded:

       It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel 
     mandates have failed. Congress took a big chance on biofuels 
     that, unfortunately, has not worked out. Now, in the spirit 
     of progress, let us learn the appropriate lessons from this 
     setback, and let us act quickly to mitigate the damage and 
     set upon a new course that holds greater promise for meeting 
     the challenges ahead.

  I agree. Not very often do we agree, but I do agree with that because 
there is something we can do about this. When you have Lester Brown, 
Miles O'Brien, Dan Rather, Time magazine, the New York Times, the 
United Nations, and Jim Inhofe all in agreement on changing an 
environmental policy, you can rest assured the policy is horribly 
misguided. All of these publications and individuals now realize the 
pure folly of the Federal Government's biofuel mandate.
  You might ask, how did we get here? I would say, when the Republicans 
were the majority party, I was the chairman of the Senate Environment 
and Public Works Committee. I worked successfully with my colleagues to 
create a comprehensive yet measured approach. The result of this work, 
the Reliable Fuels Act, was ultimately incorporated into the 2005 
Energy bill. This original renewable fuels standard--that is, the RFS--
took a commonsense approach in that it prescribed just 4 billion 
gallons of renewable fuels in 2006, growing to a feasible 5.5 billion 
gallons in 2012. This low rampup allowed time and flexibility for the 
many foreseen and unforeseen challenges likely to surface with the 
implementation of such a program. Under my leadership, the committee 
held at least 13 hearings on the RFS program, examining issues from the 
future of transportation fuels to the most recent and, unfortunately, 
last oversight hearing in September 2006 which highlighted the 
implementation of the RFS program.

  However, despite the enormous amount of attention and the eventual 
legislative enactment of that now greatly expanded RFS program, the EPW 
Committee has failed to hold even one hearing on RFS this Congress.

[[Page S3472]]

This morning I challenged the chairman of that committee. I am still 
ranking member, but I challenged Chairman Boxer to hold such a hearing. 
Despite the EPW Committee's failure to conduct any oversight, by 2007 
it had become increasingly clear that to double the RFS mandate into a 
shorter timeframe would prove reckless and premature. Yet many in 
Congress refuse to acknowledge the many warning signs.
  The 2007 Energy bill mandated 36 million gallons of biofuels by 2022. 
Of this, 15 billion gallons are now required from corn-based ethanol by 
just 2015. Washington was abuzz last year with talk of energy 
independence, cutting our reliance on foreign sources of energy, 
increasing supplies of fuels, investing in biofuels, lowering the price 
of energy, especially prices at the pump--all fine goals. Yet this 
Congress's actions didn't meet its rhetoric. I believe a secure energy 
supply has to be grounded in three principles: stability, diversity, 
and affordability. Our policies have to promote domestic energy 
production, including oil, gas, nuclear, corn, as well as renewable 
fuels.
  I have said this over and over. We need all of the above to meet the 
energy crisis in America. What the Democrats and the green movement 
failed to understand is environmental regulations are not free. They 
have a very real price. We should be producing more fuel at home. It is 
good for our security, good for jobs, good for consumers.
  Working with Congressman Frank Lucas, I sponsored and secured Senate 
passage of the first national transitional assistance program to help 
farmers grow dedicated energy crops for cellulosic biofuels. This 
measure is vital to the development of cellulosic biofuels in the 
United States because it would encourage U.S. agricultural producers 
within a 50-mile radius of a cellulosic biorefinery to produce nonfood 
energy crops for clean burning fuel.
  In addition, I am proud of the research taking place in my State of 
Oklahoma. It is being done by the Noble Foundation and its partners. By 
focusing on cellulosic ethanol, we can stimulate a biofuels industry 
that doesn't compete with other domestic agriculture. Since you can 
grow it all over the country--and that is not to be said about corn--
you avoid the transportation problems of Midwest-focused ethanol. 
Cellulosic ethanol can increase both energy and economic security.
  Washington has a long way to go to get energy policy right. The 
future of energy is going to require a wide variety of fuels and 
approaches. We all need to work together to achieve our common goals. 
The only way they can defeat us is to divide and conquer. We have seen 
examples of that recently. But we all need to work together. I call on 
all of my colleagues today to set aside our differences and work 
together for an abundant, secure, and environmentally sound energy 
policy.
  It is worth repeating that when you have Lester Brown, Miles O'Brien, 
Dan Rather, Time magazine, New York Times, the United Nations, and Jim 
Inhofe all in agreement on changing an environmental policy, you can 
rest assured that the policy is horribly misguided. All of these 
publications and individuals now realize the pure folly of the Federal 
Government's current biofuel mandates. Once again, I call on Congress 
to revisit the enactment of this mandate.
  Secondly, what we have to do--and I still am the ranking member of 
the Environment and Public Works Committee which has jurisdiction over 
the EPA--is to call upon EPA to put a stop to the mandate now. It can 
be done while they are trying to determine what effect this has on our 
food supplies. The only way to do it is to stop the mandate while the 
review is taking place. People are starving to death because of this 
transfer from food to fuel.
  As the ranking member of the EPW Committee, which has jurisdiction, I 
am going to ask for an immediate waiver to stop this mandate.
  I yield the floor to my good friend from Kansas who agrees with 
everything I just said.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester). The Senator from Kansas.

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