Articles by Tom Philpott
Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.
All Articles
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Rising sugar prices mean even more profit for the ethanol king.
In today's Main Dish, I attempt to lay out the long and twisted tale of Archer Daniels Midland's government-aided hijacking of the nation's biofuel market. (A while back, during the Poverty and the Environment series, I tried to tell the related story of how ADM high-jacked the food system.)
A few days ago, an interesting bit caught my eye in the Wall Street Journal that I couldn't fit into my piece. It's a twist on the topic of ADM, high-fructose corn syrup, ethanol, and Brazil.
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A blistering report on biofuel from the tropical south.
In today's Main Dish, Julia Olmstead surveys the environmental liabilities involved in biofuel production -- stuff you don't typically hear about in, say, an Archer Daniels Midland press release or from celebrity biodiesel enthusiasts.
One of Julia's focuses is industrial biodiesel production, which, she writes, is increasingly focusing on tropical palm as a feedstock:
Throughout tropical countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, and Colombia, rainforests and grasslands are being cleared for soybean and oil-palm plantations to make biodiesel, a product that is then marketed halfway across the world as a "green" fuel.
As if on cue, today's Wall Street Journal features (sub required) a blistering report on that very topic.
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How the world got addicted to oil, and where biofuels will take us
They may be hyped as the way of the future, but biofuels already count as a juggernaut. Supported by the government and embraced by the Big Three automakers, ethanol is surging in the United States. Biodiesel, meanwhile, is roaring ahead in Europe as the continent strives to meet its carbon-emission obligations under the Kyoto treaty. […]
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Two stark takes from ground zero of our Gulf misadventure
John McGrath recently argued persuasively here that the Iraq War deserves to be taken more seriously by environmentalists.
No one bothers to deny it's an oil war anymore; the time has come to take it seriously as such. It's important to know what precisely is happening on the ground in Iraq, and to try to get a handle on the labyrinthine politics now at play.
To that end, here are two blunt recent reports.
