[Hydroshock]

Movie theaters and fish fries hardest hit.

[mcg2000]

ummm ... how much land are we paying farmers NOT to harvest????

[50sDad]

Dear God, are these people ever happy?

[ClearCase_guy]

Malthus was right!!!

[P-40]

The growing myth that corn is a cure-all for our energy woes

I pretty much quit reading there.

[steve-b]

Bravo Sierra. All the government has to do is quit paying farmers to not grow corn, and there'd be enough to eat, turn into ethanol, and build a mile-wide bowl of Corn Chex.

[2banana]

If we use the socialist farming methods (like in Zimbabwe) - there will be plenty of food (at least for the party elite).

[cripplecreek]

I wasn't aware that people ate a lot of corn stalks and sugar cane.

[from occupied ga]

This just shows what a truly poor choice ethanol is for a motor fuel. Not to mention that a number of studies show ethanol is a net energy consumer ie you use more fossil fuel energy to produce the ethanol than you get back out of the ethanol you produce.

[Graybeard58]

Ping.

And it's Wal-Marts fault too.

[VeniVidiVici]

If today's entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into fuel for cars, it would still satisfy less than one-sixth of U.S. demand.

Oh brother. Here we go again with the "will only supply one-sixth of U.S. demand" argument.

I get tired of these idiots and their arguments that we should never do anything about energy self-sufficiency as it's all only a drop in the bucket.

[jwalburg]

My friend's husband is a consultant for people building ethanol plants. He says in only a few years they will be turning garbage into fuel. Corn is just a stepping stone.

[hlmencken3]

B as in 'B', S as in 'S'.

The high food value of corn - oil, protein and fiber - is not used to make ethanol and is used to make people food (mostly by being fed to livestock). Ethanol is made from the starch in corn, which isn't highly valued nutrition-wise.

[betsyross1776]

Any thing to keep us dependent on foreign oil. The truth is the gov in our country actually pays the farmers not to plant half their fields so they can import from other countries. We would have no problem feeding our selves and growing corn. Only ones who would have a fit are the trouble makers in the middle east, who black mail the world with oil and of course the oil companies.

[DungeonMaster]

I knew this was coming.

[Paul Ross]

The problem is simple: It takes a whole lot of agricultural produce to create a modest amount of automotive fuel.

Lester Brown is not either very knowledgeable or expert, but he plays one on tv.

The switchover to bio-mass alternatives, basically highly efficient use of renewable agri-waste and low-impact plants, such as switch-grass etc is looming. Corn is projected to go over $5 a bushel even without the pressure of the ethanol industry, and this will, by the force of the free market, make it much more conducive to the adoption of the new feedstock sources for fermentation. Corn will be phased out...naturally...as a market response. Farmers will be happy, as they will have even more variety of sources of income, and stable income, they can develop. American auto owners will be happy, because their fuel prices will stabilize and their gas tanks won't be able to be shut off at the whim of Adhmanajad and Osama Bin Laden and his kin.

But, pity the poor liberal television gloom-and-doomers. They will be very unhappy.

[PogySailor]

SO......

Ethanol was the answer, until we start using it. So now it's "bad"

Wind power is the answer, until someone wants to build wind mills where the Kennedy's might see them. Now they are bad.

SSDD.

[RightCanuck]

All the world's problems are easily solved; cover the planet with solar panels and corn!

See, why was that so hard to figure out?

[b4its2late]

Jeeez. Now if old people fill up thier cars with a gas/ethanol blend, they'll starve even more than they are already!

[xcamel]

I'm thinking cattails, broom corn, and reedgrass first.

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

But....Global Warming (trademark, Algore LLC) should expand both the growing season and the Northern extent for grain. Win-win.

Keep driving those SUVs, folks!