Ethanol Arrogance.
The first time I gave more than a passing thought to ethanol as an alternative fuel source was when I was driving from Pennsylvania to Idaho last summer. I drove for four days, and it seemed to me a good portion of the time I was driving through corn fields with signs posted every so often identifying them as destined for ethanol production. That was right in the middle of the China food and toy scare, and almost as an aside I found myself wondering why we were growing all this corn that we wouldn't be eating. Why not have the Chinese grow the ethanol corn and have us grow our own food so we wouldn't have to check the labels on everything we eat?
Somewhere in the middle of my four day spree I filled up my motorhome with 10% ethanol fuel...not too much later I vapor-locked because of that self-same ethanol and lost an hour of travel time waiting for the engine to cool down.
Needless to say I was unimpressed with ethanol.
A few months ago I was shocked to hear that it took 100 pounds of corn to make one gallon of ethanol. This was about the time I started hearing about food shortages in the third world and I began to wonder if the two were connected. I was pretty ticked actually, thinking of all those pounds of FOOD going into a product I don't have alot of faith in when riots were beginning to pop up because of the shortages.
Now my feelings have turned more toward outrage. I had lunch with a good friend this past Sunday -- someone involved with agriculture who spends a lot of time traveling in poorer countries. He gave me a few more facts I almost wish I hadn't heard. For instance:
- Because of outrageous government ethanol subsidies, a vast amount of American farmers have turned their fields over to corn production. It's more profitable than growing anything else these days.
- Because of that turnover, there are now shortages in all kinds of products. Potatoes are generally grown for $4 a 100-weight and, for the past several years, have been sold for $5 or $6. This year potatoes are selling at $40 for the same weight. Farmers who didn't switch to corn will make up 10-years of loss in just one season. And that increase holds true for many products across the board.
- And finally, the kick in the gut that exposes the whole ethanol debate for the scam it is -- it takes more than one gallon of diesel to produce one gallon of ethanol. We're losing with each gallon we make!
My agricultural friend sent me a link this morning to a New York Times article celebrating Florida's purchase of a sugar refinery. The state will buy United Sugar for almost 2 billion dollars in order to return their land to its pre-white man purity. Are you kidding me? And where are we going to get sugar from then...the pristine purity of China?
I'm not anti-environment by any stretch of the imagination. I think we should take care of the planet God granted us; we should certainly be more careful than we are...but there are other factors to consider. National security and stability for one -- what in the world are we going to eat if we get to the point where we're importing everything and the world decides it's in their best interest to cut us off?
But I think the more important issue is that of responsibility to our fellow man. It is pure, unmitigated arrogance on our part to be so wrapped up in environmentalism <which is at the root of this ethanol nonsense> that we significantly impact the fate of the rest of the world's stomach. As if we didn't already have enough to be held accountable for.
