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Pumping Up Ethanol
By Mr Ethanol | October 25, 2007
Winnipeg Free Press:
Ethanol is perhaps as good an example as one can find of the dangers of governments, panicked by public concern over climate change, rushing pell-mell to embrace the first, the easiest, the most visible possible solutions to a complex problem.
The Manitoba government in the next two years will spend $52 million subsidizing the production of ethanol, a gasoline substitute made from agricultural food crops. In the following six years, that subsidy will rise to $140 million, on top of what the province has already paid to start up the industry.
But what will that $140 million buy for Manitobans, what will the hundreds of millions of dollars that other Canadians are paying, the billions of dollars that the American government is putting up to promote the use of ethanol buy for the world? What will it all contribute to the war on global warming?
Well, no one knows for sure. We do know that a mixture of 90 per cent gasoline and ten per cent ethanol, as Manitoba will require in most gasoline sold in the province beginning in January, will not damage modern automobile engines and will moderately reduce the greenhouse gases they produce. And that’s about it. After that, it’s all by guess and by golly as far as the climate change part of the problem goes because, while we think that human activity plays a part in global warming, we don’t know how big a part. The roots of the problem are still only vaguely understood.
That doesn’t stop politicians such as Premier Gary Doer and United States President George W. Bush — Who would have ever thought to see those two standing cheek-by-jowl on any issue?
Topics: Ethanol, Industry, Legislative |
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