Tag Archives: delhi

Why New Delhi’s air is always so toxic this time of year

by winonaogden3719 Posted on November 5, 2019

India’s capital city of New Delhi has been making headlines this week for its abysmal air quality as the concentration of particulate matter reached above 400 micrograms per cubic meter, 20 times the levels deemed healthy by the World Health Organization and the worst the city has seen since 2016.

On October 31, the government declared a public health emergency, closing schools, banning construction and fireworks, and limiting private vehicle use to every other day for five days in an effort to protect the population and make a dent in the pollution. Flights have been delayed and hospitals inundated with patients suffering from coughs, dry eyes and throats, and other symptoms brought on or exacerbated by the toxic air.

On the ground, it looks like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. Blanketing the streets is smog so dense you can’t see the length of a city block, and the sharp smell of smoke is detectable even through a mask, without which you’d be exposed to air that, over the course of a day, is equivalent to smoking a couple packs of cigarettes.

Unfortunately, this sort of air pollution is nothing new to the residents of Delhi, nor those of many other Indian cities. A study released earlier this year found that 22 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities are in India, and the fall and winter months are always especially toxic.

The stew of pollution choking New Delhi this time of year doesn’t have one single source. Massive clouds of smoke drift south from the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana, where farmers burn crop stubble from their fields after the harvest to trap nutrients in the soil. Fireworks set off in the streets by the city’s 2 million residents during the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, don’t help either. And then there are the usual suspects: car and industrial emissions.

But it’s not just human activity that’s to blame — local weather patterns don’t help the problem, either. Cold air settles into the low-lying city, bringing with it, and holding in, pollutants.

The government has been struggling for years — mostly without success — to curb air pollution. Crop burning and firecrackers are both illegal, but people mostly ignore these bans, as well as the efforts to replace the practices with greener alternatives.

Hopefully residents will be breathing easier soon — air quality has begun to improve significantly in the last couple days thanks to winds, the odd-even car scheme, and a reduction in crop burning in Haryana. But these are short-term fixes, and just as history tells us that this year’s emergency-level air pollution wasn’t a fluke, it also suggests that large-scale measures will need to be taken if the people of New Delhi hope to avoid future polluted falls and winters.

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Why New Delhi’s air is always so toxic this time of year

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The Bay Area samples what life is like in Asian megacities — and for some of its own residents

by LakeshaWong Posted on October 13, 2017

As you might have heard, those of us who live in the Bay Area are breathing air this week that rivals Beijing’s, thanks to the fires raging across Northern California. West Oakland deals with bad air quality all the time, so I reached out to some folks there seeking perspective.

Margaret Gordon, a local grassroots activist, suggested I talk to Eryk Maundu. He’s a techie-turned-urban farmer who takes a data-driven approach to agriculture, and he had an inkling before most of us that something very bad was happening to the Bay Area’s air.

Just last week, he put up some new air quality sensors around his food plots. They registered a huge spike in contamination levels on Sunday night — three times worse than when he had tested the sensors around some friends who smoke. “I never thought I’d see it go higher than that,” he told me.

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Maundu thought he might have to throw the sensors out, until news broke Monday morning of wildfires tearing through Napa and Sonoma counties, about 50 miles north of San Francisco. Within the next few days, all of us in the Bay Area could see the same thing Maundu’s sensors were telling him: Our air was unhealthy to breath.

“The numbers are off the charts,” says Walter Wallace with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The big health concern: Particulate matter carried by the smoke sticks to our lungs and can cause breathing and other health problems. “It’s so small that our bodies can’t defend against it.”

Suddenly, everyone in the region is getting double dose of what the air is like in parts of West Oakland, where one of the country’s busiest ports brings in a steady stream of truck traffic, nearby highways ferry tens of thousands of cars every day, and asthma rates are some of the highest in the state. On Thursday, the air quality throughout Oakland was second-worst in the nation behind Napa, where fires raged.

NASA Earth Observatory

More than 20 blazes consumed more than 200,000 acres of land statewide, largely north of the Bay Area, where at last count 31 people have died, close to 500 are missing, and 90,000 have been displaced. The largest of the fires, the so-called Tubbs fire, which is primarily raging in Sonoma County, was just 25-percent contained as of Friday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The fires have destroyed homes and businesses in the region north of San Francisco often called “wine country.” In the Bay Area — which includes Oakland, where I live — we have been told to stay indoors. It’s a tall order in a part of the country where the predictable weather and the natural beauty begs residents to be outside. And our current predicament may continue through this weekend.

Anthony LeRoy Westerling, an environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Merced, says that wildfires are bigger, more frequent, and burn for longer now than they did in the 1980s. You’ll never guess what Westerling concludes is behind this phenomenon: A warmer climate that dries out forests. And more fires means more destruction where they burn and more intolerable air downwind.

The smoke blowing into the Bay Area has prompted a run on 3M N95 Particulate Respirator masks and air purifiers. Many who have the means have taken spontaneous road trips south or east to flee the particulate matter readings hovering around five times normal. Others are reporting headaches and respiratory problems. I suffered from childhood asthma, and spending about 10 minutes outside without a mask, breathing in air that smells like a campfire, made my lungs feel heavy.

All of this sent me to the Ace Hardware on 3rd St and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in West Oakland, where I joined a flow of customers buying N95 masks that sold for $2 a piece (I bought 12). The store has sold tens of thousands of masks in the past few days, struggling to try to keep up with demand.

“Yesterday morning was the big push, and then today has been even bigger,” the store’s general manager, Brian Altwarg, told me on Thursday. “And from what I see on the news, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Florine Mims has lived in the area for nearly 60 years, and she arrived at the Ace around 2 pm on Thursday, riding and then pushing her electric wheelchair after its battery lost its charge. She has a number of health problems, including asthma, and hoped getting a mask would bring her some relief.

“They gave me two,” she says about the N95 masks she carried out of the store. “I’m hoping they’ll help me breathe better.”

Mims, and a significant percentage of West Oakland residents, are the group most at risk over the remaining days if fire containment, a change in wind direction, or rainfall doesn’t help clear out the noxious air, says John Balmes, a medical doctor and environmental health scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“A week of exposure to this level, it’s going to affect people with preexisting asthma, but it won’t cause their asthma to stay bad,” Balmes says. “They have bad pollution all the time in a lot of the megacities in Asia.”

While the regular air quality readings in West Oakland don’t quite rival those in places like Beijing or New Delhi, its residents are used to living with pollution. The community recently filed a federal civil rights complaint against the port of Oakland and the city for discriminating against the largely black part of town by allowing more development to creep into the area and ignoring pleas to monitor air quality.

For now, though, the experience of breathing in dirty air is a shared burden for people in the Bay Area. And that’s an irony that isn’t lost on those living in West Oakland, like Margaret Gordon.

“This whole thing with the fire was a real equalizer for everybody,” she says.

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The Bay Area samples what life is like in Asian megacities — and for some of its own residents

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5 Surprising Animals You Didn’t Realize Were Pollinators

by AllisonPTJ Posted on June 25, 2016

You’ve probablyheard a lot about the important role honey bees play in pollinating flowers, fruits and vegetables. But did you know that bees aren’t the only animals that are busy transferring the pollen that makes it possible for plants to reproduce? Here are five other important creatures that make it possible for our gardens to grow, farms to thrive and Mother Nature to stay happy and healthy.

Longhorn Beetle -Beetles, the largest order of insects in the world, pollinate as they move from flower to flower, where they consume nectar, pollen and flower parts. Though not as important as flies, butterflies, and bees, they still play an important role in pollination, especially in the tropics. With that said, it’s estimated that there are 52 native plant species pollinated by beetles in North America north of Mexico. There are no crops in the U.S. known to be pollinated by beetles except for the nativepaw paw. The long-horned beetle, Cerambycidae, is one of many beetles that help flowers reproduce.

Mexican Long-nosed Bat – A bat is actually a mammal, not an insect or a rodent, and bats generally play an important role pollinating fruit trees and flowers. At sometimes almost four inches long, the Mexican Long-nosed Bat is relatively large compared with most bats found in the U.S. It can be dark gray to “sooty” brown, and itslong muzzle featuresan obvious nose “leaf” at the tip. It has a very long tongue so it can dip three inches deep into a flower to slurp up the nectar. Found in Mexico and Texas, these bats help agave or century plants stay alive.

“They are very strong, highly maneuverable fliers,” reports, Texas Parks and Wildlife, “and like hummingbirds, are able to hover in flight while they feed. A mutual relationship exists, with the bats depending on the plants for food, and the plants benefiting from the bats as pollinators.”

Crested Honeycreeper – This bird,(Palmeria dolei), lives onthe Hawaiian Island of Maui. It is different from other pollinators in that it only pollinates one plant: the one it eats to survive. It’s the `ōhi`a plant, and until recently the plant itself was threatened because it was being overrun by wild pigs. The Fish and Wildlife Service has now protected the crested honeykeeper under the Endangered Species Act, setting aside a 7,500 -acre natural reserve and fencing two thousand acres to keep the pigs out. That’s been important because while the bird once lived on 485 square miles of terrain spread out over both Mauri and Noloka’i, it now lives on only 5 percent of its former Maui territory, and no birds at all remain on Molokai. If you ever get to Maui, you could identify this bird by its series of large white feathers running down its head, just above its bill and its bright orange plumage. Orange and silver accents on the wings and legs make this a beautiful bird.

Miami Blue Butterfly – As you might imagine, this little butterfly lives in south Florida, specifically on a few of the Florida Keys. Though it pollinates flowers, its ability to continue to perform that service is threatened by its very survival. The insects habitat and range are being destroyed by development and population growth, agriculture, and climate change.

“Collection of the butterfly is also a significant threat,” reports the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ”Impacts from increasing threats are likely to result in extinction.”

Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly – You may never have thought of flies as pollinators, but this one is. It’s found in the Delhi Sands area of the “Inland Empire” region of California, from north of Sacramento to Los Angeles. It’s the first and only fly to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. Like butterflies, honeybees and other pollinators, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly feeds on nectar from flowers. Thisfly is important, in part, because it will protect many other species also living in the dunes, notes the Xerces Society, including not only the flowers it pollinates, butthe western meadowlark and the burrowing owl, mammals like the Los Angeles pocket mouse, butterflies and other insects, and numerous reptiles.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has pulled together this list of other pollinators if you want to appreciate how many there are!

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Surprising Animals You Didn’t Realize Were Pollinators

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Temperatures in India reach a terrifying 123 degrees

by SarahTKTmunrv Posted on May 24, 2016

Men wash themselves at a water tap on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India. REUTERS/Amit Dave

Temperatures in India reach a terrifying 123 degrees

By on May 24, 2016Share

India is reeling from a heatwave so high that shoes are melting to roads, cities are banning cooking during the day, and hundreds have died. Nowhere is as hot as the northern city of Phalodi, where temperatures reached a staggering 123 degrees Fahrenheit last week, breaking the previous record set in 1956.

India is no stranger to high temperatures and large disasters: 2015 was an especially devastating year for the country, with heat, drought, and floods killing hundreds of citizens. All of these disasters have been linked to climate change, which especially affects developing nations like India, where over 20 percent of the population lives on less than $1.90 a day and 300 million lack electricity.

See pictures from the current heatwave below.

New Delhi, India, May 23, 2016. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee

Mumbai, India, May 23, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui 

Kolkata, India, May 24, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri 

Kolkata, India, May 24, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri 

Kolkata, India, May 24, 2016. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri 

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Temperatures in India reach a terrifying 123 degrees

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India floats ambitious goal: 100 percent electric cars

by CandelaTonkin Posted on March 29, 2016

India floats ambitious goal: 100 percent electric cars

By on 29 Mar 2016commentsShare

India has a grandiose vision for its 1.2 billion people to drive only electric vehicles by 2030. And that’s not even the most ambitious part — the government thinks it can do it without spending a dime.

“We are trying to make this program self-financing,” Power Minister Piyush Goyal said at a youth conference this week, according to The Times of India. “We don’t need one rupee of support from the government. We don’t need one rupee of investment from the people of India.”

Goyal noted that a small working group of politicians will meet in early April to hammer out the details of the goal, which could include a program to incentivize buying electric cars by making them zero-down investments. Later on, the money the car owners would have spent on gas could go to paying off the price of the vehicle, according to Goyal.

As far as number of cars owned per household, India ranks low on the list, with just 6 percent of households reporting they own a car. But that number is expected to grow exponentially as the economy expands.

It’s not the first time India has announced sweeping sustainability plans under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sometimes to mixed results. Last October, the world’s third biggest greenhouse gas polluter announced its new climate plan, promising to obtain 40 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (primarily solar) by 2030. But earlier this year, the World Trade Organization ruled that provisions of Modi’s solar plan shut out international companies, particularly the U.S., from India’s burgeoning solar market. Most recently, the country levied a 4 percent “green” tax on new passenger vehicle sales, part of an effort to fight air pollution and traffic congestion.

India has no time to waste to tackle its pollution problem as its capital, New Delhi, already has worse air quality than Beijing.

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IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri resigns

by Myrna Posted on February 25, 2015

High profile head of the UN’s climate science panel steps down and denies charges of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female researcher. Rajendra K. Pachauri Juan Karita/AP The chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, resigned on Tuesday, following allegations of sexual harassment from a female employee at his research institute in Delhi. The organisation will now be led by acting chair Ismail El Gizouli until the election for a new chair which had already been scheduled for October. “The actions taken today will ensure that the IPCC’s mission to assess climate change continues without interruption,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, which is a sponsor of the IPCC. Pachauri, 74, is accused of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female researchershortly after she joined The Energy and Resources Institute. Lawyers for the woman, who cannot be named, said the harassment by Pachauri included unwanted emails, text messages and WhatsApp messages. Pachauri, one of the UN’s top climate change officials, has denied the charges and his spokesman said: “[He] is committed to provide all assistance and cooperation to the authorities in their ongoing investigations.” His lawyers claimed in the court documents that his emails, mobile phone and WhatsApp messages were hacked and that criminals accessed his computer and phone to send the messages in an attempt to malign him. Read the rest at the Guardian. View post – IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri resigns

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IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri resigns

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India may be the next big polluter to announce a climate plan

by JillianKuykenda Posted on December 2, 2014

India may be the next big polluter to announce a climate plan

By on 2 Dec 2014commentsShare

India is poised to unveil a new climate plan as soon as January, an Indian business publication is reporting. That’s yet another bit of good news that makes a 2015 global climate agreement look just a little more likely.

Up until now, India, the third-largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases, has been resistant to calls for limiting emissions. But when the U.S. and China, the two largest climate polluters, announced an agreement to curb their emissions last month, the world’s eyes turned toward the third country in line.

India’s announcement could come this January, when President Obama visits the country at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The plan “is likely to include an ‘aspirational’ peaking year for India’s greenhouse gas emissions,” writes the Indian Business Standard, which attributes the scoop to three anonymous sources in Modi’s government. The report continues:

The process to make fresh and enhanced commitments to the international community was in the works for the past few months, with the government commissioning studies to assess and project India’s greenhouse gas emissions. The results of these studies are due in December. A joint US-China announcement has incentivised India to make an early announcement in this regard.

Though the announcements by the US and China weren’t seen as ambitious by the Indian government, these were appreciated for their political significance. …

A source in the government said, “The consultations have begun for it. We should be able to narrow down on the nature of targets we should aspire to. It is likely to include an indicative year by which India’s emissions could peak, as well as a fresh target for lowering the economy’s carbon intensity.”

India’s timeline (that is, its timeline for announcing its pollution-cutting timeline) fits with what U.N. climate negotiators are hoping for. Countries are supposed to announce their emission-reduction goals — their “intended nationally determined contributions,” referred to as INDCs or NDCs — by March 2015. Then, if all goes according to plan, in December of next year world leaders will commit, at a big U.N. climate summit in Paris, to hold one another to their INDCs. The criteria that negotiators will use to evaluate whether each country’s INDC is appropriate — i.e., whether each country is actually pulling its weight — is one of many items on the agenda at this week’s climate conference in Lima, Peru.

Of course, this initial Business Standard report won’t quite have climate hawks doing gleeful backflips. There are still big questions, like, when will this “‘aspirational’ peaking year” be? How high will emissions be allowed to rise before they peak? And how probable is it that India will even achieve its aspirations? Many are worried that the countries that have yet to make commitments will allow their emissions to peak too late or too high. Greenpeace noted in a recent working paper on its hopes for Lima that “Countries should neither be allowed to come up with too many different timelines for their commitments, nor should the targets be locked in for 2030, as there is a real risk of the targets being too low, in which case low ambition would be locked in for 15 crucial years.” But there’s a possibility that India will do both.

Still, India has historically been granted more leeway than other countries because of its deep poverty and its comparatively low per-capita emissions. Around 300 million of its more than 1.2 billion people don’t have electricity, and giving them access to it could lead India’s emissions to balloon for decades to come. Recognizing this possibility, the U.N. came up with an unrealistic but not impossible model for how the world could avoid catastrophic climate change while India’s emissions continue to grow substantially as it hooks its poor up to power.

But it’s not a foregone conclusion that India’s development has to come hand-in-hand with greater emissions, nor is it a given that the Indian people will want it to. The country is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and its major cities already deal on a regular basis with air pollution levels that put Beijing to shame; the capital is considering a plan to close schools on days when pollution poses a high risk to human health. (Indians checking the day’s Google Weather forecast for New Delhi will often find that it’s “Smoke.”) India’s plans to double coal production in the next five years won’t help. But its plans to rapidly expand solar energy, which Modi’s delegation intends to tout in Lima, will.

So even though a lot is still up in the air (ahem) with regard to India’s future, the Business Standard report is another positive development in what’s starting to resemble a trend: The biggest greenhouse gas emitters are stepping up and demonstrating that they’re doing something to tackle this looming threat, even if not yet enough. This year has seen China, the U.S., and the European Union (the latter of which, if taken as a single entity, pollutes more than India) announce new goals and timelines. Now India may follow suit. Who’s next?

Source:
India may set bigger climate change targets before Obama’s R-Day visit

, Business Standard.

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Indian bummer: Is Delhi the smoggiest city in Asia?

by paczaizmon Posted on January 30, 2014

Indian bummer: Is Delhi the smoggiest city in Asia?

By

Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier

Delhi smog.

I cough a lot.

It’s a pervasive pulmonary curse here in Delhi where I live, courtesy of the city’s soupy winter smog.

The air pollution in India’s capital during the wind-deprived cold season is abominable. The sources are numerous and perpetual: It’s caused by soot spewed out of coal-burning power plants and from vehicles idling on congested roads. It’s caused by fires — large ones used to remove crop residue from surrounding farms, and small ones used for cooking and warmth by city dwellers.

Sometimes data shows that the air in Delhi is worse than it is in Beijing, that presumed global capital of vaporized carbon. Sometimes data shows the opposite. So which of these two polluted Asian megacities has dirtier air overall?

An unusual international brouhaha has just erupted over that very question, fueled by media coverage of Delhi’s pea-soup smog.

In separate articles published this week, two prominent newspapers concluded that Delhi’s pollution is worse than Beijing’s. Both articles have been challenged. A scientist with the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) — a joint project of Yale and Harvard — says a Hindustan Times page one article was based on a misinterpretation of the project’s latest report. And a similar story in the New York Times that had nothing to do with the EPI has been criticized by the Indian government for leaning heavily on limited data.

I’m familiar with the challenges of comparing air pollution levels among cities in developing countries. I wrote a piece for Slate last winter about World Health Organization data showing that Delhi is among 26 cities, most of them in Asia, that consistently endure worse air pollution than Beijing. But the WHO data was cobbled together from a variety of sources, and a lack of air-quality monitoring standards makes precise scientific comparisons impossible.

Indian officials have been scrambling to repudiate the recent news reports, pointing out that their own hopeless air-testing regimes mean that nobody can say with certainty whether their air is worse than Beijing’s. The Wall Street Journal explains (in an article written by my wife — and, yes, this is the kind of thing that we talk about over dinner):

An accurate comparison of air quality in any two cities requires data from consistently calibrated ground stations. Beijing reports data on PM 2.5 concentration on an hourly basis over a publicly accessible platform, according to EPI. There are several air monitoring stations throughout the Indian capital and at least two different government-funded sites that report their results. But one rarely works and the other makes an assessment based on 24-hour-averages.

To be sure, Delhi has a pollution problem. But a scientist here who monitors the capital’s air quality says that recent comparisons to Beijing made in both the Hindustan Times and the New York Times are speculative.

“The air quality in Delhi and in India is very bad,” said G. Beig, a program director at a research department under the Ministry of Earth Sciences. “But certainly it is not as bad as Beijing’s,” he added.

The answer to the question of which city is more polluted is less important than the debate itself. The debate is a reminder that although China is notorious for its air pollution, the problem of filthy skies is one that stretches almost throughout Asia. Few regulations govern the rampant burning of coal and other fuels in developing Asian countries, which are desperately trying to catch up to Western levels of wealth.

Media reports that focus solely on China’s pollution woes have tended to understate the vastness of the world’s air-pollution problem — a problem that scientists blame for millions of deaths every year (most of them in Asia). A lot of Asia’s air pollution ends up blowing over the Western U.S., fueling at least one extra smog day in Los Angeles every year. Soot blown mountainward also traps heat and settles on glaciers, hastening their demise.

But media focus on China’s pollution may have helped spur some of the country’s recent environmental reforms. And if that’s the case, then the growing focus on Delhi’s deadly air pollution is warmly welcomed by this cough-wearied environmental reporter.


Source
Delhi vs. Beijing: How to Read Pollution Statistics, Wall Street Journal
Beijing’s Bad Air Would Be Step Up for Smoggy Delhi, New York Times
Delhi world’s most polluted city: Study, Hindustan Times
Delhi says air ‘not as bad’ as Beijing after smog scrutiny, Agence France-Presse

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Fact Check: The Washington Times on the RFS

by Posted on April 22, 2013

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Fact Check: The Washington Times on the RFS

Posted 22 April 2013 in

National

It’s déjà vu all over again with a recent Washington Times piece from Steve Goreham. Friends of renewable fuel will be familiar with all of the reasons why his arguments are bunk, but stick with us as we put Goreham’s feet to the fire on his RFS fallacies:

First, his argument that “US dependence on oil imports is greatly reduced” and therefore we no longer need the RFS misses the mark. As long as the US remains reliant on oil as our main fuel source, swings in oil prices will continue to affect the U.S. economy – and harm consumers at the pump. Learn the “Truth Behind High Gas Prices in 60 Seconds.”

And, no, America cannot drill its way to oil independence. Check out why:

A recent American Security Project report finds that “we cannot drill our way out” of vulnerability to global oil markets. The reality that increased domestic production does not equate to being insulated from a global market – because America’s oil reserves are not big enough to supply 100% of the fuel demand.
A recent report by IEA predicted that drilling our way to oil independence will still leave us with oil costing $215+ per barrel. And you guessed it: consumers filling up their tanks will foot the bill.

Unfortunately, for U.S. consumers the only way to truly reduce our dependence on foreign oil is by diversifying our fuel supply with low-cost, homegrown renewable fuel.

Second, Goreham get caught red-handed with not keeping up with the news cycle, when he writes, “recent studies show that the use of ethanol and biodiesel does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

News flash: Last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released their Tracking Clean Energy Progress report in New Delhi. The report explains that biofuels are playing a significant role in reducing greenhouse gases and in fact, IEA is calling for increased global biofuel production to further GHG reduction. Check out the full Fuels America blog post on this here.

Additionally, he states “mandates for ethanol vehicle fuel are also boosting food prices.”

In reality there is no correlation between food prices and ethanol production. Need proof? In this chart, note the strong divergence in 2009 – as ethanol production rose, food prices fell. That is because food prices ARE driven by OIL prices. Note the exact correlation between food and oil – not food and ethanol – prices in the 2009 time period, in this chart.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, 84% of retail food costs are derived from non-farm costs, leaving the cost of food that derives from the value of farm products at 16%.

Bottom line: the RFS is providing consumers with choice and savings, creating jobs, and providing environmental and improving national security. What has the RFS done for you lately? A lot.

 

 

 

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Fact Check: The Washington Times on the RFS

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