Rolling Stone magazine has written what I have been saying for a while now. Ethanol isn’t the end-all, beat-all of our energy problems. It has it’s fair share of issues and uninteneded consequences, but since Iowa holds the first primary and Iowa grows the most corn in the nation, politicians can’t get enough of ethanol. But what is the price:
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, put it recently, “Everything about ethanol is good, good, good.”
This is not just hype — it’s dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn’t burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption — yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.
We’ve covered the increase in the price of tortillas in Mexico and the importance of that food in the Mexican diet. We have also covered the damage that ethanol does to the environment. We have also covered the subsidies on ethanol, but it’s worth another look:
Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners. And a study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to as much as $1.38 per gallon — about half of ethanol’s wholesale market price.
Remember that next time you fill up with E85 and think it’s so much cheaper than the other gas. Add that $1.38 a gallon in and see how cheap it is. Thank Archer Daniels Midland, the largest producer of ethanol and a giant supporter of politicians who pimp the stuff.
