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(Continued from page 24)
their gasoline, it has become one of America's most widely produced renewable fuels.
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• 2. When it burns, ethanol emits less carbon dioxide than gasoline. That's why it is a centerpiece of the government's plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
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• 3. But getting ethanol from corn has a hidden environmental price that the government rarely acknowledges. America's ethanol policy has encouraged farmers to plant millions of new acres of corn.
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• 4. More than 5 million conservation acres -- environmentally sensitive farmland that had been set aside and allowed to grow as grassland -- have disappeared on Obama's watch.
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• 5. Every time a farmer plows into grassland, it releases carbon dioxide that had been naturally locked in the soil. In the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the policy encourages a practice that emits greenhouse gas.
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• 6. The corn boom has increased fertilizer pollution in Midwest waterways and beyond. Scientists say that's worsened a huge "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
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• 7. Environmentalists and many scientists now say, when all the environmental factors are considered, corn ethanol is not a viable strategy for combating global warming. But it has been a boon to Midwest farmers. The Obama administration no longer pitches ethanol as a greenhouse gas strategy. Rather, it's frequently presented as a program that helps rural America.
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The secret, dirty cost of Obama's green power push
DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press
MATT APUZZO, Associated Press
• CORYDON, Iowa (AP) -- The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.
• Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.
• It wasn't supposed to be this way.
• With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global (Continued on page 26)
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