National controversy, local success: CNN, designers look at biofuels, community, values

CNN “State of the Union” host and chief national correspondent John King reported that “Ethanol keeps Nebraska running in tough financial times,” where a “comparatively better” farm economy in Nebraska has an unemployment rate if 4.9 percent compared to the national average of 9.8 percent.

“In Washington,” said the report, “ethanol is a source of controversy, with many lawmakers arguing it is an industry unfairly propped up by generous federal subsidies. To Nebraska, however, it is the direct source of roughly 1,000 jobs at ethanol production plants across the state, many of them located in small towns where those 40 to 50 plant jobs are the local gold standard.Jeff Shaner said the impact on corn prices from ethanol adds 10 percent to 15 percent to his bottom line, and without a doubt contributed to Nebraska’s comparatively low unemployment rate.”Absolutely. Whether it be truck drivers, machine shops, people that are at the plant, maintaining the plant, hauling the garbage away from the plant,” is Shaner’s partial list of the economic impact. “It is a tremendous ripple effect.”

Meanwhile Illinois, Digest editor Jim Lane said that celullosic ethanol producers, facing challenges at the national policy level over the appeal of ethanol and the industry’s ability to meet the proposed 2010 Renewable Fuel Standard of 100 million gallons, “can win at the local level – can matter to a community, and you already do. Manhattan and Manhattan, Kansas are both governed by a national mandate but have vastly different stakes in the outcome in terms of their local economies. Is Manhattan, Kansas interested in biofuels soely because of cheap or cleaner-burning fuel? Are local economic incentives built around creating the value economics that flow from scale – or is this about a more holistic, yet more local, vision of wealth and opportunity creation?” The full text of “Value or Values?” is here.

A Croatian firm has proposed the “Biooctanic”  crop production tower for Zagreb, saying that they envision “ creation of utility towers used for production of bio fuel and city air recuperation. The idea is to place these towers on positions of existing petrol stations in cities.

“By applying the Bio towers we would reduce the amount of valuable agricultural land used for production of bio-fuel plants, reduce transportation costs and related air pollution. The visual identity of the towers is a symbol and result of their function. Beside the benefits of bio-fuel and oxygen production, we consider their architectural appearance as an added value primarily to the conscience of the city inhabitants.”

This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded in part to Elinor Ostrom. According to a report in the Economist, “she studies the governance of “common resource pools”—such as pastures, fisheries or forests—to which more than one person has access. Unlike pure public goods such as the atmosphere, where one person’s use does not reduce the amount available to others, people deplete these resources when they use them.

“Standard economic models predict that in the absence of clearly defined property rights, such common resources will be overexploited, with individuals acting without regard for the effects of their actions on the overall pool. Overfishing or overgrazing (the “tragedy of the commons”) will result. Over time, stocks of the common resource will dwindle.

“But in 40 years of studying how common resources—from lobster fisheries in Maine to irrigation systems in Nepal—are actually managed by communities, Ms Ostrom found that people often devise rather sophisticated systems of governance to ensure that these resources are not overused. These systems involve explicit rules about what people can use, what their responsibilities are, and how they will be punished if they break the rules. In particular, she found that self-governance often worked much better than an ill-informed government taking over and imposing sometimes clumsy, and often ineffective, rules.”

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