"Just Say No" to Corn and The Ethanol Hustlers
There is a real danger that Congress will remain oblivious to the economic and scientific realities of ethanol and take us down the wrong path by mandating a huge increase in ethanol production. Washington might have a love affair with ethanol for political reasons, but increasing ethanol production will lead to higher taxes, higher prices for both food and fuel, and damage to the environment, making us all worse off.
Congress needs to say no to the ethanol hustlers and end its political addiction to corn.
~From my commentary in today's Detroit News "Cornfed overexuberance: Ethanol push raises food prices, guzzles fuel, reduces water levels."
Bottom Line: Corn ethanol is all about politics, not about sound economics or sound science. Ethanol is a classic public choice example of rent seeking, special interest groups, and rational ignorance.
3 Comments:
Q. What's the alterantive to corn ethanol? A. Cane based ethanol from Brazil. It works. They use it in 80% of their vehicles. We can't get it. The heavily subsidzed U.S. corn lobby succeeded in setting a $. 54 gallon tarrif on Brazil's cane ethanol 8 times more efficient than corn to protect the unethical corn-ethanol lobby boondoggle.
Why not put a tariff on the enemy Chavez's oil? Because it doesn't effect corn people. Why? It just makes America more dependent on foreign oil. See www.joinfoil.org
If this country will come to its senses and get out of bed with corn farmers, we can get ethanol with an 8 to 1 energy yield with sugar cane; and with similar yields from wood products, agriculture waste, switch grass and citrus peel.
Hmmm, some folks need to go back and get a refresher course in chemistry 101...
Using Brazil as an example of how good ethanol works regardless of it source someone is conviently forgetting that Brazil is quite the tropical country where the need for horse power that real gasoline delivers isn't quite as necessary as it would be in this country where there are real winters and real mountains too...
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