Replies

Well my friend, the oil companies will still get their depletion allowances and other tax credits, because it takes nearly a gallon of oil to produce a gallon of ethanol. All the folks posting here in favor of ethanol leave this out of their calculations: ethanol cannot get us out of our dependency on foreign oil because it requires foreign oil to produce it. Brazil is the only country in the world which may -- and I say may -- actually be able to replace oil with ethanol. No one knows the full extent of Brazil's subsidy, so it's hard to tell. But in Brazil they don't (foolishly) produce ethanol from corn, but from cane sugar--a much more energy efficient process.

This foolishness with ethanol has gotten so far out of hand in this country that there are now a number of referenda in the Corn States to outlaw the production electricity with coal. Hello? Any of you geniuses in Kansas not understand that US reserves of easily mineable thermal coal total over 500 billion tons? Any of you people in Iowa not understand that if we don't burn our own coal then people in China, India and Japan are perfectly willing to? Any of you "environmentalists" realize that the environmental cost of transporting coal halfway around the world will be far greater than burning it here?

Like most environmentalist hype (hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal) ethanol is a technology that can't deliver. Unfortunately, it flourishes because of a manufactured constituency and poor science education.