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Ethanol Not Good For The Planet
By Mr Ethanol | August 22, 2008
Cumberland Times-News:
In a series of articles, a chemical engineer from Michigan State University attempts to defend the government’s energy policy of promoting ethanol as fuel. He does this by acting as a one-man truth squad correcting the errors of those critical of government policy.
In turn, however, many of Bruce Dale’s own statements deserve scrutiny. We will take a look at several of them.
Some critics of ethanol argue that even if all our farmlands are used to produce corn for ethanol, we will replace only about 10 percent of our fuel consumption. His response: “but 10 percent is huge.”
If we are worried about food used as fuel, we need not be. “Very little U.S. corn (about 10 percent) is fed directly to people.” But 10 percent cannot be “huge” and “very little” at the same time. Using absolute numbers does not help either. In 2007, 10percent of our oil consumption came to 6.8 million barrels and 10percent of our corn production came to 1.3 billion bushels. Why is 6.8 million “huge” and 1.3 billion “very little?”
He says, “in regard to the subsidies, the ethanol blenders’ credit of 51 cents per gallon cost tax payers about $3 billion last year, but it reduced price crop supports by about $6 billion and our oil import bill by another $15 billion. Some of that $15 billion for oil would surely end up in the bank accounts of America’s enemies.”
There is a lot going on here. We reduced our import bill by $15 billion. But the oil import bill went up by $13.5 billion, adjusting for inflation.
We socked it to our enemies. Who? He names no one. If Dale can’t name who was injured, how does he know we didn’t harm friendly nations?
If ethanol production is such a potent weapon against our enemies, perhaps we should remove our troops from Afghanistan and redeploy them in Iowa to produce more corn for ethanol.
He concludes that ethanol subsidies save us money by lowering farm subsidies. However, as corn prices go up or down farm subsidies vary inversely. Therefore, whatever caused the price of corn to increase caused the farm subsidies to go down. If ethanol caused farm prices to increase, then ethanol caused the farm subsidies to go down.
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August 22nd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Give me a break! Is oil good for the planet? American corn ethanol is miles cleaner than transporting dirty crude oil 7,000 miles from dangerous Arab deserts.