Ethanol: A Dumb Idea or A Crime — Or Both?
7th June 2022
Expanded use of ethanol — enabled by President Biden’s lifting a summertime ban on fuels with a 15 percent blend — is a poor answer to high gasoline prices and a refusal to recognize the failures of the corn-based fuel additive. Reuters described the president’s action a win for the corn lobby, but all others appear to be losers.
Shortcomings of ethanol as an alternative to gasoline have been reported continually since at least 2007 when the U.S. government expanded its requirement that distributors blend ethanol with fuels to reduce dependence on foreign oil. The additive also has been touted as a way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.
“There is a great danger for the right to food by the development of biofuels,” U.N. human rights advocate Jean Ziegler said at the time. “It (the price) will be paid perhaps by hundreds of thousands of people who will die from hunger,” A year later he called the diversion of food crops to fuel production a “crime against humanity.”