The Bio-Fuel Conspiracy
Science does not back corn ethanol as a green solution. The process is not only inefficient, but it takes food producing farm land and reduces the human food supply, thus driving us the cost of food.
Not only have United States citizens and their future unborn grandchildren been bilked out of billions of tax dollars for the Iraq war, but they are now being squeezed for a 'sure-to-fail' ethanol program.
Global Research - July, 2007 said:
The heart of the plan is a huge, taxpayer subsidized expansion of use of bio-ethanol for transport fuel. The President’s plan requires production of 35 billion gallons (about 133 billion liters) of ethanol a year by 2017. Congress already mandated with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that corn ethanol for fuel must rise from 4 billion gallons in 2006 to 7.5 billion in 2012. To make certain it will happen, farmers and big agribusiness giants like ADM or David Rockefeller get generous taxpayer subsidies to grow corn for fuel instead of food. Currently ethanol producers get a subsidy in the US of 51 cents per gallon ethanol paid to the blender, usually an oil company that blends it with gasoline for sale.
And even more prophetic (July 2007)
That bowl of Kellogg’s Cornflakes on the breakfast table, or the portion of pasta or corn tortillas, cheese or meat on the table is going to rise in price over the coming months as sure as the sun rises in the East. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the new world food price shock, conveniently timed to accompany our current world oil price shock.
Well, didn't they hit the nail on the head.
Bio-fuel is NOT the eco-friendly solution being touted by the Bush Administration.
Ethanol has little if any effect on exhaust-pipe emissions in current car models. It has significant emission, however, of some toxins including formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, a suspected neurotoxin which has been banned as carcinogenic in California.
Ethanol is also very corrosive to pipelines as well as to seals and fuel systems of existing car or other gasoline engines. So what do you do with your car, when forced to convert to bio-fuel? Why you have to pay for that conversion, which costs big bucks.
That decline in grain reserves, the measure of food security in event of drought or harvest failure—an increasingly common event in recent years—is pre-programmed to continue going as far ahead as the eye can see.
BioDiesel : The Lesser Evil?
Farming and processing corn grain to make ethanol yields about 25 percent more energy--in ethanol and coproducts such as animal feed--than it consumes. In contrast, biodiesel and coproducts yield 93 percent more energy.
One way to be sure to reduce the carbon footprint is to reuse vegetable oil or animal fat to make biodiesel.
Biodiesel, is the only alternative fuel to have fully completed the health effects testing requirements of the Clean Air Act. The use of biodiesel in a conventional diesel engine results in substantial reduction of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter compared to emissions from diesel fuel. In addition, the exhaust emissions of sulfur oxides and sulfates (major components of acid rain) from biodiesel are essentially eliminated compared to diesel."
Biodiesel is non-toxic and significantly less chemically volatile than ethanol, and can be transported (blended or unblended) in pipelines. Meanwhile, ethanol or ethanol-blended gasoline cannot be piped. Biodiesel can be used at 100% concentration with only minor engine modifications
BioDiesel/Ethanol Showdown: http://www.gobiodiesel.org/index.php?title=Biodiesel_vs_Ethanol
Ready for the Kicker?
As if replacing our crops with GE Corn for ethanol, at an inflated price, isn't bad enough, the majority of ethanol plants are located next to feedlots. What is your beef eating? It's nice to know that Monsanto is creating a corn seed that becomes infertile after one year. That ensures repeat business year after year. Follow the money trail. (cough cough ADM... http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html)
Ethanol is NOT efficient:
David Pimentel, an agricultural scientist at Cornell University and one of the foremost critics of ethanol, has conducted numerous cost analyses on ethanol production. He's made a name for himself mostly by driving the ethanol industry raving mad. From its very beginnings, when hoe enters soil, ethanol production has not changed much since the nineteenth century. Pimentel found that one acre of U.S. corn field yields about 7,110 pounds of corn, which in turn produces 328 gallons of ethanol. Setting aside the environmental implications (which are substantial), the financial costs already begin to mount. To plant, grow, and harvest the corn takes about 140 gallons of fossil fuel and costs about $347 per acre. According to Pimentel's analysis, even before the corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock alone costs $0.69 per gallon of ethanol.
More damning, however, is that converting corn to ethanol requires about 99,119 BTUs to make one gallon, which has 77,000 BTUs of available energy. So about 29 percent more energy is required to produce a gallon of ethanol than is stored in that gallon in the first place. "That helps explain why fossil fuels (not ethanol) are used to produce ethanol."
Huh? Wait - I thought we were supposed to reduce our reliance on OIL. That is what Bush said, right?
Why Rocketing Gasoline Prices?
This is where the conspiracy theory comes in. I can't get a straight answer on this while researching online, as the reasons change daily. Some excuses are - continued weakness of the dollar, violence near oil installations in Nigeria and declining Russian production. But think about it, if gasoline is SO VERY EXPENSIVE, would the public be more pliable and bend to an 'ethnol' program?
It's time for this country to stop the charade, and cease ethanol subsidies. From TIME magazine:
The U.S. and Europe should abandon their policies of subsidizing the conversion of food into biofuels. The U.S. government gives farmers a taxpayer-financed subsidy of 51¢ per gal. of ethanol to divert corn from the food and feed-grain supply. There may be a case for biofuels produced on lands that do not produce foods--tree crops (like palm oil), grasses and wood products--but there's no case for doling out subsidies to put the world's dinner into the gas tank.
With current status quo, it will soon be too expensive to drive to the grocery store, and even if you could, you won't be able to afford the food. Have fun, America!