Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

How the myth of Ethanol is ruining our economy, captivating our politicians, accelerating climate change and starving people in the third world.

First, let me start out with a couple of assumptions: we have an oil problem. Oil production has peaked, and now, as supply begins to dwindle, we are dishing out record prices, over $115 a barrel, for crude oil. This money goes into the pockets of oil companies and often into the hands of of terrorists oversees. There is no question that something must be done to replace oil.

A couple years ago the AgriBusiness giants began to pitch ethanol. It solves all our problems, they said. It makes fuel from corn grown here at home, putting money into the hands of farmers and helping climate change (burning ethanol creates zero CO2 emissions). Unfortunately, this isn't the truth.

Let's start off with the global warming part. Several studies have shown that, although ethanol itself has no emissions, the total amount of CO2 required to make the ethanol is greater than the amount of CO2 that the ethanol itself takes out of the air! In other words, this means that the corn must be:

• (Soil plowed)
  
• Planted
• Fertilized
• Harvested
• Heated (to over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit)
• Trucked (the chemical nature of ethanol makes it impossible to transport, like oil, in a pipeline)

When everything is measured, a gallon of ethanol puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than a gallon of gasoline!

Congress, however, has been captivated by the fantasy of ethanol. By portraying it as the answer to our energy problem it has played right into the hands of big corn producers (who, by the way, are major campaign contributors).

Politicians, convinced that they can spin the votes to their advantage come election-time, vote for enormous subsidies for ethanol. Through tax rebates and grants the government has set the price artificially low, creating an enormous demand: a motivation for the corn producers to put more corn towards ethanol.

There's a problem, though. Before ethanol that corn was going towards animal feed, processed human food and other things. With the US now producing billions of gallons of ethanol a year, the amount of corn dedicated to food has fallen sharply. When there is less food, prices go up. When prices go up, people in the Third World starve. It's that simple.

In short, Washington has been hoodwinked and the repercussions are devastating. With Bush announcing that he plans to stop the growth in Greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 [Notice: not "stop emissions". Rather "Stop the Growth of Emissions"] It certainly seems like our leadership is scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel. Why is it that our government is bending over backwards to avoid solving the problem?

It's time for a change in direction. Throw the bums out.

Obama for America!