Today The Oil Drum published a very good article explaining why corn-based ethanol is a bad idea.
The Oil Drum | Corn-Based Ethanol: Is This a Solution?
It looks to me like ethanol was pushed by our government reps for one reason; money. Government subsidies for ethanol production mean that corn producing states get ethanol plants which, while they don't benefit the environment or reduce dependency on foreign oil (in fact, as explained in the article, they may harm the environment and increase dependency on foreign oil), they do bring in more money to the state allowing use to create more jobs.
These jobs employ more people, allowing us to consume ever-more crap. Since the goal of American life (Bush's "nonnegotiable American lifestyle") is to consume as much crap as humanly possible, ethanol could be considered a successful endeavor.
You might object that corn ethanol is just a temporary step allowing us to set up the infrastructure for cellulosic ethanol, the product that will save the world and allow us to continue to drive as far as we want and ever-farther every year. That would be a silly objection. Cellulosic ethanol requires feedstock. Powering a country with it requires vast mountains of feedstock. Currently this feedstock is supposed to come out of the vast mountains of 'farm waste' produced by the nations farmers. Things like inedible corn and wheat stalks. Currently this 'waste' is just thoughtlessly plowed back into the soil, serving no better purpose than maintaining soil fertility. Instead, we can collect it all, load it on trucks and drive it hundreds of miles to an ethanol plant to turn it into fuel.
What's that you say? What about soil maintenance? Don't worry about that, we'll just put more fertilizer on it and hope that future generations can figure out what to do about the erosion before they run out of natural gas to produce fertilizer. Maybe they can replace it with soylent green.
The Oil Drum | Corn-Based Ethanol: Is This a Solution?
It looks to me like ethanol was pushed by our government reps for one reason; money. Government subsidies for ethanol production mean that corn producing states get ethanol plants which, while they don't benefit the environment or reduce dependency on foreign oil (in fact, as explained in the article, they may harm the environment and increase dependency on foreign oil), they do bring in more money to the state allowing use to create more jobs.
These jobs employ more people, allowing us to consume ever-more crap. Since the goal of American life (Bush's "nonnegotiable American lifestyle") is to consume as much crap as humanly possible, ethanol could be considered a successful endeavor.
You might object that corn ethanol is just a temporary step allowing us to set up the infrastructure for cellulosic ethanol, the product that will save the world and allow us to continue to drive as far as we want and ever-farther every year. That would be a silly objection. Cellulosic ethanol requires feedstock. Powering a country with it requires vast mountains of feedstock. Currently this feedstock is supposed to come out of the vast mountains of 'farm waste' produced by the nations farmers. Things like inedible corn and wheat stalks. Currently this 'waste' is just thoughtlessly plowed back into the soil, serving no better purpose than maintaining soil fertility. Instead, we can collect it all, load it on trucks and drive it hundreds of miles to an ethanol plant to turn it into fuel.
What's that you say? What about soil maintenance? Don't worry about that, we'll just put more fertilizer on it and hope that future generations can figure out what to do about the erosion before they run out of natural gas to produce fertilizer. Maybe they can replace it with soylent green.
No comments:
Post a Comment