ethanol
Save us from ethanol, a change we can believe in.
02/June/2009 07:20 Filed in: Web News
| Oikos
Thoughts
Back in the early 80s
in one of my first college graduate courses I
learned that temperate climate zone produced
ethanol from corn took two calories of energy to
produce one calorie of energy. About a decade later
I was presented with a “great business opportunity”
to help convert an old brewery in Tacoma,
Washington to produce biofuel ethanol from midwest
corn. After LOL (laughing out loud) I told the
group that theirs was possibly the most stupid
business idea I had ever heard of. Over the years I
have continued to read the reports, and finally if
you spin the numbers just right, you can show it
might work energetically in the perfect world (at
least if you believe the report). However for the
foreseeable economic horizon ethanol needs a huge
tax break to compete in the even a cartel price
controlled energy sector.
This problem is not a problem with tropical ethanol produced from sugar cane residuals. That is because the sunshine is more intense, sugar cane does not need high quantities of energetically intensive nitrogen fertilizer, nor the intense tillage and harvesting energetic requirements.
All of that does not matter to the ethanol special interest — special rights corn lobby in the United States, which helped the Bush Administration create a domestic energy boondoggle and tax incentive, that is and will continue to be perhaps the most stupid idea that it ever conceived. Thanks to that, gas mileage has been reduced approximately ten percent without any environmental benefit.
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal points that out quite well, and says that President Obama plans to raise ethanol in gasoline to fifteen percent even though the EPA and the Congressional Budget Office concur that at best ethanol is a push environmentally and in some cases a strong negative in the greenhouse gas debate. We still have not even discussed the “ten to fifteen percent increase” of “Ethanol’s Grocery Bill.”
This points directly that this country’s leadership is no longer concerned about free markets, but only on a system by which you buy money from the government. It seems as the only alternative to this is eventually, after everything runs out of gas, to institute a flat tax to run needed government programs and open up truly free opportunities to create wealth. That, after all, was once called “free enterprise” which was the energetic paradigm that made the United States the world leader it became, but is rapidly disappearing by the entropic work of a bungling bureaucratic bourgeoisie.
This problem is not a problem with tropical ethanol produced from sugar cane residuals. That is because the sunshine is more intense, sugar cane does not need high quantities of energetically intensive nitrogen fertilizer, nor the intense tillage and harvesting energetic requirements.
All of that does not matter to the ethanol special interest — special rights corn lobby in the United States, which helped the Bush Administration create a domestic energy boondoggle and tax incentive, that is and will continue to be perhaps the most stupid idea that it ever conceived. Thanks to that, gas mileage has been reduced approximately ten percent without any environmental benefit.
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal points that out quite well, and says that President Obama plans to raise ethanol in gasoline to fifteen percent even though the EPA and the Congressional Budget Office concur that at best ethanol is a push environmentally and in some cases a strong negative in the greenhouse gas debate. We still have not even discussed the “ten to fifteen percent increase” of “Ethanol’s Grocery Bill.”
This points directly that this country’s leadership is no longer concerned about free markets, but only on a system by which you buy money from the government. It seems as the only alternative to this is eventually, after everything runs out of gas, to institute a flat tax to run needed government programs and open up truly free opportunities to create wealth. That, after all, was once called “free enterprise” which was the energetic paradigm that made the United States the world leader it became, but is rapidly disappearing by the entropic work of a bungling bureaucratic bourgeoisie.