Fuels for the Future

No. 72 Summer 2007 Economic Actions for a Just Planet www.coopamerica.org Green Economy News: Our Chicago Green Festival™ Fuels for sets new records Take Action on Climate Change: the Future Tell car companies and Congress you want climate-friendly cars, now Corn Ethanol Isn’t the Answer: So which fuel really can curb emissions and reduce our dependence on foreign oil? In Cooperationp Making News and Making Waves: Fuels for the Future orking together through Co-op Al Gore himself have joined us in the of the fuel and fertilizer that goes into WAmerica, you and our members call for a moratorium on coal-fi red growing the corn and manufacturing around the country are advancing the plants. And as more information about the ethanol. ideas, practices, and holistic, system- nuclear power comes to light, more Making our fuel from corn will changing solutions that are leading to people are learning that it is indeed cause a worldwide food crisis as seri- a more just and sustainable future. too dangerous (starting with nuclear ous as the peak oil or climate crises. It As thought leaders, key infl uenc- waste and ending with proliferation) could cause a “peak food” crisis that ers in your families and communities, and too slow—we can’t build enough would be as dangerous for our country and people who take practical action, nuclear plants fast enough to make a as our dependence on foreign oil. The you’re leading the way on recycling, dent in climate change. human suffering would be tragic. Fair Trade, curbing climate change, In this issue, we are again making Consider, for example, that stopping sweatshops, supporting local news and making waves, leading according to the Environmental Policy communities, saying “no” to irrespon- the way when it comes to climate Institute, converting the entire US corn sible corporate practices and “yes” solutions. Delving into the question harvest to ethanol would satisfy only to growing the green economy. Even of how we are going to fuel our cars 16 percent of our total US fuel needs. It when others said that these ideas were going forward, we help you make would also send corn prices skyrocket- impractical, you kept to it, providing choices about the new fuels that are ing, hiking up the prices of everything the information and the example— emerging on the scene—from ethanol from beef to soda (and every product inviting everyone to join in to help containing corn syrup). Working fami- create a better world. And it’s working! lies around the world will not be able Together, we’re creating a great to afford to eat. green wave that is sweeping the Raise your voice to insist What does make sense for our country. Thanks to decades of creating that our “country stop vehicles? Plug-in hybrid electric cars awareness—making news and making going down the that get over 100 miles per gallon. If waves—more and more people now corn ethanol path. we charge these cars at night, the Na- understand that we do indeed share tional Renewable Energy Lab says that a small planet, and are ready to do we can run 73 percent of the daily com- their part. mutes for all US light-duty vehicles (i.e. Our work together is more impor- to biodiesel, from hydrogen to plug- cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans) without tant than ever. As more people and in electric hybrids.” We underscore building a single new power plant. And businesses get ready to take action, we the importance of fuel effi ciency and we can add wind power at night or need to help them take sensible action. driving less—these are the fi rst steps solar during the day to make up the rest. That’s why, in our Climate Solutions when it comes to transportation. And Plug-in hybrid electric cars are here, issue last fall, we laid out our 12-Step then we help you sort out the claims now—we just need to make it a priority Action Plan to address climate change and counterclaims for the other fuels. to get them to market. Together, we at the speed and scale required by the And once again we take thought helped create the market for the gasoline climate crisis. In our plan, we empha- leadership stands—this time on hybrids like the Prius. People love size the importance of energy effi ciency hydrogen and corn ethanol. them—let’s use them as the door and renewable energy—and how they We report that hydrogen as a openers for plug-in electric vehicles. can do the job in the building and transportation fuel makes no sense. Turn the pages for the details— electricity sectors. When it comes to Hydrogen isn’t an energy source—you and then join us. As a thought leader, transportation, we underscore the im- have to manufacture it. If you make raise your voice to insist that our coun- portance of fuel effi ciency, driving less, if from coal, it is a disaster for the try stop going down the corn ethanol and transitioning to zero-emissions climate. And while producing it with path. Most people simply don’t know vehicles. In agriculture, our plan renewables would make it a low- about the problems of corn ethanol or includes choosing local, organic food carbon fuel, the cost (in both carbon the promise of the plug-in electric ve- and eating low on the food chain and economic terms) of building a hicles. Once again, let’s lead the way. (special thanks to vegetarians and hydrogen infrastructure will be too Here’s to making news and making vegans). And it means stopping expensive—and take too long to great, green waves, deforestation, period. address climate change. As is our hallmark, we take thought We also call for a stop to the corn leadership stands in this plan—calling ethanol industry. Compared to gasoline, for no more new coal or nuclear plants. corn ethanol makes an insignifi cant con- Since last fall, climate scientists, many tribution to climate solutions, especially in the environmental community, and when you factor in the climate pollution Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director 2 Co-op America Quarterly Number 72 m designates Co-op America Business Network Member Economic Action Fuels for the Future for Africa Fuels for the Future If we hope to prevent a world climate crisis, we have to change the way we think about cars—how much we use them, how they’re made, and what type of fuel we put in them (Surprise—it shouldn’t be corn ethanol). This past winter, one of scientists’ apocalyptic climate crisis So by 2020, thousands of people living a low-impact, sim- predictions already came true. Rising sea levels, caused by ple lifestyle based on a small-scale farm and fishing industry global warming, completely wiped out the inhabited island of could watch their homes become nothing but a dark brown Lohachara, which lay off India’s coast in the Sundarban stain beneath the water, like Shyamal Mandal, who once Delta, where the Bramaputra and Ganges Rivers meet and lived on Lohachara, did 20 years ago. empty into the Bay of Bengal. Mandal has had to relocate twice due to rising sea levels. The island, once home to 10,000 people, has been slowly After his home on Lohachara flooded, he moved to the coast sinking beneath the waves for several years. In December of neighboring Ghoramara island, where he farmed vegeta- 2006, it made history when scientists at Kolkata’s Jadavpur bles and rice. He told the New York Times that he watched his University told the world that the last bit of Lohachara that piece of land crack and fall into the water, and then he moved had peeked above the delta waters had officially vanished inland where it was safer. Now, his small mud house sits from satellite photos—meaning that the island was the first near the wreckage of what was once a bustling village, half inhabited land mass to be swallowed by water since the fa- of which is under the Ganges. Since 1969, nearly half of bled Atlantis. A study conducted by the Jadavpur scientists Ghoramara has been eaten by the waves. attributed the sinking to global warming, exacerbated by in- All that stands between Mandal and the fate of his creasingly intense storms and coastal erosion. neighbors is a small mud embankment, and he told the Times While Lohachara refugees went to neighboring islands that it, too, looks likely to crumble into the river. “What will like Sagar when their homes first started sinking 20 years ago, happen next, we don’t know,’’ he said. they risk having it happen all over again, as the hungry seas Dr. Sugata Hazra, director of Jadavpur’s School of Ocean- are creeping up the shores of 12 other islands in the delta. ographic Studies, does know: “Ghoramara has been losing According to at least three Jadavpur studies, around its land at a rate of 16 percent per year,” he says. “Simplis- 70,000 residents of these Sundarban Delta islands are likely tically, only 15 percent will remain by 2100. But a single to turn into “environmental refugees” in the next 14 years. cyclone with more than a 2.5-meter surge height can entirely The islands are also home to 400 endangered Bengal tigers. change the prediction scenario, and wipe out the island.” 8 Co-op America Quarterly Number 72 m designates Co-op America Business Network Member Fuels for the Future STOPPING THE INSANITY RAJESH KUMAR SINGH Worldy/ Wid AP The thought of our homes disappearing into the ocean may be unfathomable to those of us in the US, but it’s a bitter fact of life today for islanders from the Sundarban Delta to the Pacific nations of Tuvalu and Vanuatu, among others.

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