Asia Times: What drives biofuel Bush? (Jeb Bush, in particular)

[seafan]

Jeb may be gone from the governor's mansion, but he is hard at work, micromanaging from the shadows.


What drives biofuel Bush?







By Pepe Escobar
March 14, 2007

What's with Biofuel Bush? The (dirty) secret of the new ethanol craze is that it is, once again, a Bush family business. Brother Jeb is one of the three chairmen of the Miami-based Inter-American Ethanol Commission (set up in December) along with a former agriculture minister in the previous Lula administration, agribusiness tycoon Roberto Rodrigues, and Colombian Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank.
Rodrigues spent Bush's visit to Sao Paulo perfecting his bombastic pitch all over Brazilian corporate media - stressing that "what we are doing here is launching a new civilization" based on biofuels. Jeb's pitch is way more pragmatic. In essence it involves, in the medium term, importing less oil from Chavez (12% of daily US needs) and more biofuel from friendly and/or pliable Brazil, Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean.


What this will mean in practice is hardcore US neo-colonization of Central America and the Caribbean - as vast sugarcane plantations - to feed US demand. The construction of an ethanol factory in Haiti - the poorest country in Latin America - has already been broached in the Bush-Lula discussions. Brazil leads the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti. The Haiti factory would be a model for the whole regional ethanol boom - US capital mixed with Brazilian technology profiting from a cheap local workforce.
Inevitably, the ethanol boom also fits the pattern of Latin America - in US hegemonic conception - as a mere "back yard", our "neighborhood" (a favorite Bushism) historically adept at providing fabulous natural resources, slave or semi-slave labor, strategic outposts, and markets (including financial) for US oligarchies.

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So the alliances are on the table. In the US, it's the corn-producing Midwest against sugarcane-producing Florida, and ultimately George W Bush against a protectionist Congress. In Brazil, it's Jeb Bush and US investors, allied with Brazilian agribusiness, against the Chavez "threat".
In a rally in front of 40,000 people in a soccer stadium in Buenos Aires last Friday night - parallel to Bush having a steak dinner in Montevideo, across the Rio de la Plata - Chavez stressed the "folly to plant so much corn and sugarcane not to feed humans but to sustain the American way of life". So - in Bush family business thinking - it's Chavez' oil-fueled Bolivarian Revolution against the new Green Saudi Arabia (Brazil). Or is it? Totally absent from the Chavez demonization show is always the fact that what he is doing in Venezuela is to redistribute oil wealth, land and local and regional power - anathema to US conservatives and right-wingers as well as to the greedy, arrogant Latin American white oligarchies, Brazilians included.

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The merciless spin in the new Green Saudi Arabia - by Bush and Brazilian Bush family allies - is that ethanol is cleaner than oil, more sustainable and anti-global warming. It's not that simple. Scientists point out that biofuels are not necessarily environment-friendly. For example, palm-oil bio-diesel cultivation in Southeast Asia is increasing carbon emissions. Biofuel production on a very large scale emits a lot of carbon dioxide and involves herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers - all petroleum-based.

It also requires a lot of water.

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The unsung heroes of Green Saudi Arabia are the cortadores de cana - sugarcane cutters - a migrant army of at least 200,000 workers who fled the almost Sahara-like Brazilian northeast. They work for a minimum of 12 hours a day under relentless, scorching 30-degree-Celsius temperatures to earn less than $200 a month, living in precarious conditions in crowded guesthouses charging a fortune for rent.
It's this unsung army who will allow Brazil to reach ethanol exports of 200 billion liters by 2025, with sugarcane plantations spreading from 6 million to 30 million hectares. The army will grow exponentially. In Florida it's not that much different - as in Alligator Alley west of the I95 highway: the slaves in this case are Jamaicans and the landowners are Cuban sugar kings very cozy with Jeb Bush.

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Jeb Bush and his Brazilian Green Sheikh pals are in to make a lot of money. And for a bit of R&R, retired George W can always count on the 100,000-hectare ranch daughter Barbara bought last year in the Paraguayan chaco. It may not be the green, green grass of home, but it certainly beats Fallujah.

Jeb Bush encouraged brother to pursue ethanol

By DAVID ADAMS
Published March 5, 2007


U.S. President George W. Bush holds a bottle of ethanol as he tours Novozymes North America Inc. with Mads Torry-Smith, group leader for the Biomass group, in Franklinton, North Carolina, February 22, 2007. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES)

WASHINGTON - When Americans voted for George W. Bush in November 2000, they knew they were electing a man with deep ties to Texas oil.
But six years later, a greener-sounding Bush is about to depart for a trip to Brazil, where he hopes to forge a biofuels partnership that officials believe could revolutionize America's fuel industry and transform its relations with Latin America.
Critics suspect the president's biofuels conversion is only superficial, a late-in-the-day effort to build a less oil-splattered legacy. ..... Such is the level of intensity that Bush and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will meet twice this month, a rarity for even the closest U.S. ally. After they meet Thursday in Brasilia, Lula will come on March 31 to Camp David, where the biofuels pact may be finalized.

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For years, Brazil tried in vain to persuade U.S. officials of the merits of ethanol, which had made the largest country in South America virtually energy self-sufficient.
"The price of oil for a long time didn't compel," said Donna Hrinak, U.S. ambassador to Brazil from 2002 to 2004. She recalls Brazil raising the issue in 2003. "Our response was 'We are working on the hydrogen car. We are happy with that and we'll see you later.' "
That began to change with the emergence since 1999 of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who is using his country's vast petroleum reserves to undermine U.S. influence in the region.
Bush got a taste of that firsthand in November 2005 when he attended a regional summit in Argentina that was marred by anti-U.S. riots stoked by Chavez.

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In the meantime the president received a letter from his brother in Tallahassee. Florida had taken a beating from the 2005 hurricane season, sending gas prices soaring. The governor's contacts in Miami were touting Brazil as a model for energy independence.
Jeb Bush wrote to his brother in April, urging the president to implement "a comprehensive ethanol strategy for our country and our hemisphere."
Rather than buy oil from hostile nations such as Venezuela, which supplies about 12 percent of U.S. petroleum needs, Jeb Bush said the United States ought to buy biofuels from friendly countries such as Brazil and Colombia, as well as Central America and the Caribbean.
Jeb Bush was already deep in talks with the Brazilian ethanol industry about a joint partnership. In December, two weeks before leaving office, he co-founded the Interamerican Ethanol Commission to promote regional production. Rodrigues, who gave President Bush the biofuels lecture, was a co-signer.


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Since January, Bush has been on a tear, visiting biofuels labs in North Carolina and Delaware. He hosted a hybrid car demonstration at the White House.
Last week, Bush led a panel of biofuels scientists at a leading enzymes company. Bush chatted knowledgeably about the science of ethanol and new technology to make it from nonfood crops.
"I am passionate about this subject," he told the audience. ..... U.S. environmentalists also remain deeply suspicious of the White House's motives, sensing a rush to redeem the president's legacy in his last two years in office.

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