This Is A Corny Story

I realize that this type of story has been reviewed endlessly, but I still think that it cannot be opposed too often.  This is not the answer.

Ethanol!  Ethanol!  Rah!  Rah!  Rah!

The cheers go up we can finally end our dependence on foreign oil.  Now that is a one pound bag of manure, which they are selling to the people.  Guess what!?  They are buying this crap (pun intended).  As long as we allow the oil companies to make obscene profits, you will NEVER be weaned from foreign oil.  Why is that?  Ethanol cannot be transported through pipelines, for it will pick up impurities like water.  So, the only way to transport it is in trucks.   Now guess what?  Trucks use diesel and that is another pollutant.  Ethanol IS NOT the answer, sports fans.

Let us talk about how environmentally friendly ethanol is, NOT!  A Stanford study showed that ethanol is at least as polluting as gasoline and could be more so.  The burning of ethanol produces more lung damaging ozone than the burning of gasoline.  Another polluting factor of ethanol is that farmers will use a nitrogen based fertilizer which will enter into the water supply, killing marine life and such.  This alone should make it unwise to push the use of corn as an alternative.  But who cares, it is all about who makes the profits, not what it will do to the environment.

Now let us talk about corn prices.  Ethanol refiners use huge amounts of corn and with that food prices will go up and up. Corn is used in food production from feed for the cattle that make our steaks to the syrup for our soft drinks.  As the demand for ethanol rise, so will the price of our food.   The more corn that is planted the less other crops are raised and this will also add to the price of food.  Nothing about ethanol is a good.

Corn is not even the best source of ethanol.  Sugar cane is and it produces 8 times more energy than it uses to make.  Corn, however, the ratio is 1.3 to 1.  This basically means that corn produces a little more energy than it consumes in the refining process.  Not an efficient product.

The US is importing foreign oil so that ethanol can be produced and distributed.  The only thing that is being accomplished by the production of ethanol is we are putting the grocery store in competition with the gas station for the use of the corn.

Ethanol is nothing new!  It was used in Ford’s original Model T and it was considered in the 1970’s during the oil embargo.  If ethanol is inefficient and costly why is it even being considered?  That is the easiest question to answer-PROFITS!  No one in the oil business wants to eliminate out dependence on foreign oil.  Why would they shoot themselves in the ass?  Answer-they will not cut off their supply of profit.  

This is not an answer to dependency, it is however an answer to oil companies retaining their profit margin, for an additive will still need a supply of the original product and that translates into continued exploitation by the oil companies.