Tell the EPA: Corn Ethanol Isn't A Sustainable Fuel
In the past five years alone, Big Ethanol has plowed away more than five million acres of our conservation land so it can plant more and more corn to feed its record profits. All the while, corn farmers use 195 lbs of nitrogen fertilizer per acre of corn — much of which runs off into the Mississippi River and contributes to the growing marine life dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
To make matters worse, it takes 1.7 thousand gallons of water to make just one gallon of corn ethanol. This is an irresponsible use of our water resources at a time when some people in our country are suffering from extreme drought conditions.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a problem: They're stuck dealing with a broken policy that Congress is unwilling to fix. That means the EPA continues, as it did in May, to require increasing amounts of ethanol to be blended into our gasoline, despite its costly and damaging toll on Americans.
You read that right — despite the failures and issues with ethanol fuel in the past, the EPA is compelled by a flawed law to force ethanol into our tanks. While the EPA tries to patch the problems with this policy, we're stuck dealing with the unintended consequences, like water pollution, competition for land use, and increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Don't let Big Corn continue to drive a policy that's bad for most Americans. For the sake of our environment, sign and tell the EPA to lower their proposed ethanol mandates now!
Dear EPA,
The green promise of the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, has never come to fruition – but it seems like the EPA is still holding on to the dream. Despite a preponderance of evidence that shows the mandate has harmed land, water and air, the EPA recently proposed raising the amount of corn ethanol blended into gasoline in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Recent studies show that ethanol refining actually worsens the pollutants that cause ground-level ozone, or smog, a pollutant the EPA is preparing to further clamp down on later this year. How can the agency support a policy to increase ethanol when doing so will undermine its own goals of cleaning up smog?
Furthermore, numerous peer-reviewed papers have shown that ethanol is actually worse than pure gasoline when it comes to the emissions blamed for global warming. As the EPA works toward limiting greenhouse gases from power plants, it appears to be condoning more of them out of tailpipes.
Ten years of the RFS program have shown that the ends don’t justify the means in achieving this policy’s environmental objectives. Increasing the use of ethanol, and therefore the necessary production of it, runs counter to ongoing climate concerns and undermines this administration’s other policy initiatives. All of this to say that the EPA should refer to the facts and lower the ethanol volumes in their proposal before the rule becomes final.
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Sincerely,
[Your name here]
