In my University of Georgia days, corn-based ethanol meant bourbon whiskey, or that stuff someone’s uncle got from this guy he knew who made it in his woodlot but don’t tell anyone. Don’t drink it; it’ll kill ya’. Instead, now we’re supposed to drive on it?
A little light weekend reading:
Corn-Based Ethanol: Is This a Solution?
The message keeps repeating: we can’t just find new things to drop in the gas tank.
Of course corn is not a solution- the whole program is just pork for the corn producing states. ALCOHOL, however, could be a solution… alcohol made from sugarcane. The only problem is that you can’t grow sugarcane in Kansas, so no one will vote for it. We could just buy the alcohol from Brazil- but there’s prohibitive tariffs on it to protect the corn states! As long as farmers vote en bloc, and as long as presidential candidates need those votes, we will not be able to buy Brazilian fuel. *sigh*
My father-in-law is recently retired from the USDA. He has told me many times that corn is not the cost efficient way to create bio-fuels. There is some kind of saw-grass that would need to be grown in most North American latitudes. But the corn processing industry has a very strong lobbying effort in Congress (just witness the pervasive use of corn syrup over all other sugar sources including sugar beets).