Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
The Ethanol movement is wildly popular for three reasons:
1. The Environmental movement likes it because they have a hate-on for Hydrocarbon companies and would like to see any 'solution' that would remove them from the process. It plays nicely into their 'anti-corporate' agenda. They also romaticize with the 'cottage industry' notion that plants grown by individual farmers would be generating an alternative fuel.
2. Normally conservative rural farmers in the US Mid-West and Canadian prairies are seeing their property values sky-rocket as corn prices and corn futures increase dramatically in price. They don't really care about the environment any more than the next guy but this lines their pockets. They romaticize with an era in which their small-towns were bustling with activity and local people didn't move away to the big city. Ethonal plants give them hope that their dying farm communities will see new life.
3. The politicians that harness these two forces together under one tent. Think of the votes this issue has, it sucessfully combines the left with 'red-state' rural types. A power bonanza in many US States. This third point is what stops any attempt at rational thought that proves that Ethanol from corn in North America is a marginal alternative fuel in both economic terms and as a means of energy storage.
Fact is we use Crude Oil and Natural Gas because no other fuel on earth has as much energy potential and portability. We would reduce many more environmental evils and at a cheaper cost if we as a society plowed all of the money given to the ethanol crowd into making our current energy infrastructure more efficient. Still using fossil fuel, but using much less of it until a better alternative than Ethanol from corn comes around.
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That's a pessimistic view--and on the details, you're absolutely right. But you forgot one factor:
4. Consumers like it because it makes them feel like they're helping the environment. Most people care about the environment, but want to find ways of solving the problem that don't involve drastic lifestyle changes--totally understandable.
This is based on misinformation--but here's my optimistic spin on it:
Ethanol fuel is probably no better for the environment--and moreover, corn isn't even the best way to produce ethanol (there have been experiments with some kind of fast-growing tree that I understand were pretty promising--poplar? I don't know--just something I heard on the radio). It's a process that as I understand it, makes very little economic sense, and has a net carbon-emissions effect that is pretty underwhelming, because of the fuel expended in production.
The good news to me is that the popularity of ethanol among consumers shows that given economical environmentally friendly options, consumers will choose them if they can. This should provide a blueprint for effective environmental changes that can be made in the private sector, including more fuel-efficient cars, which I'm guessing very few consumers would complain about--a change that would undoubtedly have a very positive carbon-emissions effect. Or more efficient houses--and on the subject of farm subsidies, affordable LOCALLY PRODUCED food.
Some food for thought: if you drink a glass of milk, the fuel expended to get it to your grocery store is usually greater than the fuel you expended to get it to your house. Eating local foods is one thing that everyone can do that does have a dramatic impact--but it's not realistic in some areas because the local food is, ironically, more expensive. If we make that change, and inform people that it's far better than ethanol, my guess is that we see slow but steady changes in consumer behaviour on that score.