Ethanol Industry Torn Over Losing Subsidy Billions
21st July 2011
Quelle domage.
The federal government pays oil companies about $6 billion a year to blend ethanol into your gasoline; it’s been subsidizing ethanol for 33 years now.
No mention the damage done to cars and their owners by the ethanol mix. After all, who cares about them?
The government forces oil companies to use ethanol. And that mandate is growing. Next year, it will call for more ethanol than the industry produced this year.
Of course, reality has never intruded into the world of government mandates.
A tariff on imported ethanol will die with the subsidy. But that’s not likely to stop ethanol production from using about 40 percent of all the corn grown in the United States.
Corn that could be used to, oh, I don’t know, feed people perhaps. But I guess nobody in government cares about them, either.
July 21st, 2011 at 11:56
There are a sizeable number of eco-advocates (usually the uninitiated) who seem to believe that ethanol and bio-diesel will be the Magic Bullet which will solve our oil woes. They won’t. They can’t. The numbers don’t work. If the entire corn crop were to be given over to ethanol production, it would only reduce oil imports by some 6%-10%, hardly enough to be noticeable.
So-called “alternative fuels” will only make a significant difference if we develop the technology to convert “waste” bio-mass (like Kudzu–a lovely thought) into fuel at a rate and cost equal to gasoline, which I don’t forsee.
However, the corn used to produce ethanol would not go to feed people if it weren’t used in fuel. Most of the corn raised here is used for livestock feed. So your steak may be a little cheaper, but folks would still go hungry.
Too bad C. W. Post isn’t still around…
July 21st, 2011 at 13:48
Let them eat steak!