Powering America, One Corn Flake At A Time
July 13th, 2007 by Vihar ShethPosted in Energy, Technology
How much time can pass between posts, even when you’re thinking about post ideas and visualizing contributing to your own blog, is amazing. I’ve read loads of great stuff in the past few weeks but alas, haven’t been able to share any of what’s I’ve learned. The cream of the crop article I read recently though, has to be Robert Bryce’s, “Despite Its Huge Flaws, Ethanol Is Political Holy Water in DC,” which was originally published in the Washington Spectator, and then again on Alternet.org on 7/7/07. This is the pièce de résistance for environment-loving, ethanol skeptics, who with this information at hand, become ethanol detractors with very defendable positions.
Bryce basically sums up why ethanol isn’t the second coming of petroleum by discussing these four ridiculously huge problems:
- “First, the subsidies. Making ethanol from corn borders on fiscal insanity. It uses taxpayer money to make subsidized motor fuel from the single most subsidized crop in America.”
- “The second problem: no matter how you slice it, ethanol production is just too small to have a significant effect on the overall energy market in the U.S.”
- “The Environmental Protection Agency’s website says the agency’s mission is “to protect human health and the environment.” And yet when it comes to ethanol, the EPA has stated in very clear language that increased use of ethanol in gasoline will mean worse air quality in America.”
- “While Americans are breathing more polluted air due to ethanol, they are also paying more at the grocery store, a fact that leads to the fourth problem: ethanol is increasing food prices.”
Beyond the fact that increased ethanol production will ruin the United States in new and exciting, it’s a great new trend. Every single freakin’ presidential candidate is backing it, and more ignorantly than the next. Bryce points out that since Iowa is such a large corn state, its presidential primary is driving stupidity among candidates to unforeseen heights. The mind boggles at how easy this country can move from one cancer to the next. I suppose fighting illegal wars that kill American soldiers is better than pricing poor families out of the market for cereal and polluting their neighborhoods, but not by much, and the very deliberate nature of both decisions boils the blood.
Related Posts
- America’s Corn-Based Idiocy
- Making the Right Ethanol Decision
- Six of One, Half Dozen of Another
- Kicking the Oil Habit
- Think Big, Really Big
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