With royal fanfare, British Petroleum just donated $500 million in research funds for UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois to develop new sources of energy—primarily biotechnology to produce biofuel crops. This comes on the anniversary of Berkeley’s hapless research deal with seed giant Novartis ten years ago. However, at half a billion dollars, the BP grant dwarfs Novartis’ investment by a factor of 10.
The graphics of the announcement were unmistakable: BP’s corporate logo is perfectly aligned with the flags of the Nation, the State, and the University. CEO/Chairman Robert A. Malone [at right] proclaimed BP was “joining some of the world’s best science and engineering talent to meet the demand for low carbon energy … we will be working to improve and expand the production of clean, renewable energy through the development of better crops…” This partnership reflects the rapid, unchecked and unprecedented global corporate alignment of the world’s largest agribusiness (ADM, Cargill and Bunge), biotech (Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont), petroleum (BP, TOTAL, Shell), and automotive industries (Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, SAAB). With what for them is a relatively small investment, these industries will appropriate academic expertise built over decades of public support, translating into billions in revenues for these global partners.
Could this be a “win-win” agenda for the university, the public, the environment and industry? Hardly. In addition to overwhelming the university’s research agenda, what scientists behind this blatantly private business venture fail to mention is that the apparent free lunch of crop-based fuel can’t satisfy our energy appetite, and it will not be free or environmentally sound.
Dedicating all present U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12 percent of our gasoline demand and 6 percent of diesel demand. Total U.S. cropland reaches 625,000 square miles. To replace U.S. oil consumption with biofuels, we would need 1.4 million sq. mi. of corn for ethanol and 8.8 million square miles of soybean for biodiesel. Biofuels are expected to turn Iowa and South Dakota into corn-importers by 2008.
The biofuel energy balance—the amount of fossil energy put into producing crop biomass compared to that coming out—is anything but promising. Researchers Patzek and Pimentel see serious negative energy balances with biofuels. Other researchers see only 1.2 to 1.8 returns, for ethanol at best, with the jury still lukewarm on cellulosic biofuels.
Industrial methods of corn and soybean production depend on large-scale monocultures. Industrial corn requires high levels of chemical nitrogen fertilizer (largely responsible for the dead zone in Gulf of Mexico) and the herbicide atrazine an endocrine disruptor. Soybeans require massive amounts of non-selective, Roundup herbicide that upsets soil ecology and produce “superweeds.” Both monocultures produce massive topsoil erosion and surface and groundwater pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff. Each gallon of ethanol sucks up three to four gallons of water in the production of biomass. The expansion of irrigated “fuel on the cob” into drier areas in the Midwest will draw down the already suffering Ogallala aquifer.
One of the more surreptitious industrial motives of the biofuels agenda—and the reason Monsanto and company are key players—is the opportunity to irreversibly convert agriculture to genetically engineered crops (GMOs). Presently, 52 percent of corn, 89 percent of soy, and 50 percent of canola in the United States is GMO. The expansion of biofuels with “designer corn” genetically tailored for special ethanol processing plants will remove all practical barriers to the permanent contamination of all non-GMO crops.
Obviously the United States can’t satisfy its energy appetite with biofuels. Instead, fuel crops will be grown in the developing world on large-scale plantations of sugarcane, oil palm
and soybean already replacing primary and secondary tropical forests and grasslands in Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador and Malaysia. Soybeans have already caused the destruction of over 91 million acres of forests and grasslands in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. To satisfy world market demands, Brasil alone will need to clear 148 million additional acres of forest. Reduction of greenhouse gases is lost when carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of small-scale peasant farmers are being displaced by soybeans expansion. Many more stand to lose their land under the biofuels stampede. Already, the expanding cropland planted to yellow corn for ethanol has reduced the supply of white corn for tortillas in Mexico, sending prices up 400 percent. This led peasant leaders at the recent World Social Forum in Nairobi to demand, “No full tanks when there are still empty bellies!”
By promoting large-scale mechanized monocultures which require agrochemical inputs and machinery, and as carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops, CO2 emissions will increase not decrease. The only way to stop global warming is to promote small-scale organic agriculture and decrease the use of all fuels, which requires major reductions in consumption patterns and development of massive public transportation systems, areas that the University of California should be actively researching and that BP and the other biofuel partners will never invest one penny towards.
The potential consequences for the environment and society of BP’s funding are deeply disturbing. In the wake of the report of the external review of the UCB-Novartis agreement that recommended that the university not enter into such agreements in the future, how could such a major deal be announced without wide consultation of the UC faculty? The university has been recruited into a corporate partnership that may irreversibly transform the plant’s food and fuel systems and concentrating tremendous power in the hands of a few corporate partners.
It is up to the citizens of California to hold the university accountable to research that supports truly sustainable alternatives to the energy crisis. A serious public debate on this new program is long overdue.
Miguel A. Altieri is a professor at UC Berkeley and Eric Holt-Gimenez is executive director of Oakland’s Food First.
source: 7feb2007
Seven years ago, the Atlantic Monthly published “The Kept University,” a story about a $25 million five-year liaison between the giant Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis and California’s premier public university, UC Berkeley. Today, critics say the university has not sold itself so cheap, having announced last week that it sealed a $500 million deal with BP (formerly know as British Petroleum), ignoring a 2004 Michigan State University report on the Novartis-university experiment that cautioned the university against entering into future agreements with industry involving large groups of researchers.
The 10-year partnership with the oil giant, whose 2006 net income was $22.5 billion, also includes Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (which the University of California runs for the Department of Energy) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.UC Berkeley/LBNL will get $400 million over four years for the new Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) and the University of Illinois will receive $100 million.
“In launching this visionary institute, BP is creating a new model for university-industry collaboration,” said UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Research Beth Burnside, professor of molecular and cell biology, quoted in a UC Berkeley press statement.
The project is “dedicated to long-term research into the production of alternative fuels, converting fossil fuels to energy with less environmental damage, maximizing oil extraction from existing wells in environmentally sensitive ways, and finding ways to store or sequester carbon so that it does not get into the atmosphere,” the UC Berkeley statement says.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger [at left], at UC Berkeley for Thursday’s ceremonial announcement, said the state would kick in another $40 million to construct a building for EBI, proposed for the Strawberry Canyon area of campus, near, but not within, the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs property. The funds would come from bonds that would have to first be approved by the legislature. (Other politicos present to cheer on the partnership included the mayors of Berkeley and Oakland, State Sen. Don Perata and Assemblymember Loni Hancock.)
The deal raises a host of questions for UC Anthropology Professor Laura Nader: “Do they have academic freedom?” Nader asked in an interview with the Daily Planet Friday.
Nader’s concern was that if some scientists were to begin their research at the institute in one direction, they might not be free to shift gears to follow their inquiry in another direction, if they came to believe that more appropriate.
“The university has more to give BP than BP has to give the university,” Nader added, noting that the link to the university is “one way for BP to clean up its reputation. BP is in legal trouble from Texas to Alaska.”
Nader was referring to a March 2005 explosion at a Texas refinery that killed 15 people and injured 170. BP accepted full responsibility for the blast.
And she was talking about BP’s March 2006 leakage of 200,000 gallons of crude oil in Alaska, one of the state’s largest oil spills.
BP’s reputation has been further tarnished:
“BP made $5.3 billion in profits in the first three months of the year. African Americans are major consumers in the U.S. market that BP controls. But they aren’t in on the rewards. BP has 800 gas distributors who now own more than 10,000 gas stations around the United States. None are African American,” he wrote.
“Of 1,200 senior managers in the United States, BP has zero African Americans. Of 33 vice presidents, zero African Americans. BP does some $16 billion in procurement each year—less than one-third of 1 percent of which goes to African-American businesses.”
British Petroleum, originally known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company when it was established about 100 years ago, merged with Amoco, formerly Standard Oil of Indiana, in 1998 and renamed itself BP in 2000 at which time it adopted the tagline “Beyond Petroleum.” Arco is a subsidiary of BP.
Ignacio Chapela, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, is another faculty member questioning the wisdom of the new partnership. Chapela was one of the chief critics of the Novartis deal.
“I feel bad about this,” Chapela told the Daily Planet. “I feel like a broken record. Ten years ago, Novartis tried to do the same thing.”
Just like the announcement a decade ago, this one came as a surprise, he said. “There was no discussion.”
Among the questions that need to be raised, in addition to the independence of academic research, is whether the university will be used by BP to shield it in questions of legal responsibility, he said. “The university is under a lot less scrutiny” than companies standing on their own.
“How come nobody asked these questions?” he asked.
In addition to legal protections involving BP research and product development, the university also shields private corporations in other ways: the public-private institute, on university property and exempt from city zoning regulations, will come under less strict environmental review when it constructs its building. It will also be exempt from city property and business taxes.
William Drummond, professor of journalism and chair of the Academic Senate, said he is happy Nader and Chapela are raising questions about researchers’ academic freedom.
“I don’t want a repeat of Novartis,” he said. “Their concerns are valid.”
However, he supports the venture. “This area of research is important to our future,” he said. “It’s good for the campus, for the students and for the planet.”
Drummond asked, “What is the alternative? Wait for the glaciers to melt?”
Still, Drummond said he doesn’t have an idealistic view of BP. “What do you expect of capitalists? They do bad things,” he said. “We need to protect ourselves so that they don’t steal the farm.”
One safeguard will be the vetting of new hires for the project through the Academic Senate.
A professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Miguel Altieri shares many of Chapela’s concerns, further pointing out possible environmental devastation that could be caused by the need for corn production for corn-based ethanol, the major alternative fuel to be studied in the project. Because there’s not enough land in the United States for production, companies would go to foreign countries to grow the crop, using herbicides and pesticides and depleting the land, he said.
“It would cause huge environmental damage, including deforestation,” Altieri said. “We need an open discussion of this new deal.”
Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of CorpWatch in Oakland and author of Iraq, Inc., said by putting money into research for alternative fuels, BP is “greenwashing” its reputation.
While it is not a bad thing to try to develop alternative fuels, he added, BP won’t be funding the critical need. “What we really need is public transportation—more buses and trains,” he said. “Producing ethanol is not going to make a big difference—it’s just a diversion.”
source: 7feb2007
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