Interesting article on the globe website detailing how bad ethanol is.
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Not so long ago, you could feel complacent - smug even - about your little greenish exertions. You traded your SUV for a smaller set of wheels. You bought compact florescent bulbs and dragged the old push mower out of storage. You approved of ethanol and other biofuels and vowed to buy them whenever possible. Okay, there wasn't a lot of sacrifice involved. But you could feel a tad superior to your fossil-fuel-slurping neighbours.
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An OECD report released this week said biofuels may "offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal." It said the vast amounts of land devoted to biofuel production harms biodiversity and pollutes the environment with herbicides and pesticides. (A July report put out by the OECD and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said rising biofuel demand is "underpinning higher agriculture prices" and will lead to a "food-versus-fuel" debate).
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Still the OECD report is welcome. But will it tip the balance against ethanol? Forget it. Big Ethanol, like Big Oil and the big defence contractors, is so well entrenched, so well organized and financed, that it will roll over your farmland and your forests like an Abrams tank.
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Canada has become subsidy-mad too. Manitoba, for example, is offering production incentives of 20 cents (Canadian) a litre for producers. Even better (for the ethanol industry) are the provincial and national ethanol content mandates. Manitoba passed a law requiring that 85 per cent of the gasoline sold within the province contain 10-per-cent ethanol. Ontario's requirement is 5 per cent, rising to 10 per cent in a few years. A national program that will require a 5-per-cent blend is to come into effect in 2010. If all this weren't enough, the feds and Ontario exempt ethanol from fuel taxes.
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Interesting read. Heres the link for more information:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ess/columnists
I for one think that ethanol subsidies were a bad idea to begin with.
What are your guys thoughts?
Is it to late to stop Ethanol?
