Once-Darling Ethanol Losing Friends In High Places 586
theodp writes "It's now conceivable, says BusinessWeek's Ed Wallace, that the myth of ethanol as the salvation for America's energy problem is coming to an end. Curiously, the alternative fuel may be done in by an unlikely collection of foes. Fervidly pro-ethanol in the last decade of his political career, former VP Al Gore reversed course in late November and apologized for supporting ethanol, which apparently was more about ingratiating himself to farmers. A week later, Energy Secretary Steven Chu piled on, saying: 'The future of transportation fuels shouldn't involve ethanol.' And in December, a group of small-engine manufacturers, automakers, and boat manufacturers filed suit in the US Court of Appeals to vacate the EPA's October ruling that using a 15% blend of ethanol in fuel supplies would not harm 2007 and newer vehicles. Despite all of this, the newly-elected Congress has extended the 45 cent-per-gallon ethanol blending tax credit that was due to expire, a move that is expected to reduce revenue by $6.25 billion in 2011. 'The ethanol insanity,' longtime-critic Wallace laments, 'will continue until so many cars and motors are damaged by this fuel additive that the public outcry can no longer be ignored.'"
We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:4, Insightful)
...and so it ends up everywhere, from our stomachs to our gas tanks. High-fructose corn syrup anyone?
The newly elected congress? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not exactly sure, but I don't think they've actually done anything yet. Everything so far is the lame duck congress.
Re:A little ethanol is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not all ethanol is created the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Pollution shift allows pollution control and avoids depending on the owners of autos to maintain them. Central powerplant upgrades cost less than dispersed vehicle fleet replacement.
"Smaller (lighter) cars are the only solution."
Their is no "only solution", there are a vast number of partial, complementary solutions. The "central solution" idea is both stupid and a distraction from intelligent comprehension of the systems that need changing.
Re:Not all ethanol is created the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Lucky you. You don't have a sugar cartel controlling supply and jacking up prices like we do.
ETOH? No, thanks.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maize ethanol was never a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Corn ethanol diverts field corn from the already-mammoth agribusiness industry that pumps field corn into just about every foodstuff in the country-- everything from livestock to all processed foods and fast foods (corn oil, high fructose corn syrup). It thus encourages the expansion of that industry, which uses vast amounts of fossil fuel and its derivatives to grow corn-- that's why many experts say that you don't get nearly as much bang for the buck as you do when you process sugar cane into ethanol. And that doesn't even account for the fertilizer and pesticides/herbicides that end up in the Gulf of Mexico due to runoff (not that it will matter much for the foreseeable future).
It would be a lot more worthwhile for the government to reduce corn subsidies and use that savings to either cut the deficit or invest in things like renewable energy infrastructure or non-corn biofuel research or even tax breaks for efficiency upgrades. Alas, ADM and Monsanto contribute hugely to PACs of Congressmen who vote to continue the subsidies (and no doubt hire them as lobbyists when they retire), therefore we do not see any change in this regard.
Re:Not all ethanol is created the same (Score:5, Insightful)
National Corn Growers Association.
Now there wouldn't be anything self serving on that site would there?
Re:Thank the electoral college (Score:4, Insightful)
The correct terms for subsidies given to favored corporations, Real Americans($100,000/year+ preferred), professional sports teams in need of new stadiums, or politically vital constituencies, are (depending on the exact structure of the subsidy) "Price Supports", "Providing Market Stability", "Job Creation", or simply polite silence backed by an impenetrable wall of densely legal technicalities.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Alright, who's in charge of deciding who gets to live and who gets to die? Population explosions are usually a survival mechanism. Past a certain level of prosperity and education, you have bigger problems with population decline. If you want to 'control populations', give them liberty and education. There are more than enough resources left on earth to reach that goal but our great civilized cultures would rather see the starving masses die off than elevated to our own level if one is to believe people like you.
Re:Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
This dumb argument comes up each and every time. Less reproduction is the answer, not culling of the current population.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the implied solution is to stop giving welfare to the megacorps over-producing corn. If you don't like that, why are you supporting welfare for the rich?
Re:Who extended the tax credit? (Score:1, Insightful)
You see, you lefties are all alike... no sense of humor. If I poked fun Sarah Palin or W you or somebody like you would have modded me up.
but now your feeble attempts to say something relevant are easily and deservedly ignored
Except you don't seem to be ignoring them...
Enjoy your lonely troll hole
Oh, it's not so lonely. I've got you to talk to.
Re:I would mod you up if I had the points (Score:4, Insightful)
The USD should be losing value, it's the natural evolution of a currency from a country with a trade deficit. America is uncompetetive with low infrastructure investment precisely because the USD has not been allowed to fall by it's trading partners (which have printed money and buying up dollars to make sure that doesn't happen). In the short term the Chinese rather have US factories through outsourcing than factory output, and is selling it's citizens into slavery to make it happen.
Of course the US should never have gone along with that scam, since at some point the Chinese will decide they have enough factories ... and divert factory output to internal consumption, at which point the US will neither have the cheap goods nor the factories and will be properly double fucked
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:4, Insightful)
What the fuck are you talking about? US destroyed its industry and "outsourced" it to China. Raw materials are worthless if you can't make anything out of them.
"Energy" (oil) is only a noticeable part of the picture because you can do minimal processing of it, then pump the result into your car, so you can drive 100 miles every day to your office job that manages reselling Chinese imports. This is what US economy got reduced to, and messing with green paper can't change it.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:5, Insightful)
US destroyed its industry and "outsourced" it to China.
Actually there's still a lot of good stuff that's made in the US. It's just the labor-intensive jobs - whatever tasks that can't be easily automated - that've been exported to Mexico, Central America, and China.
For example, about a year and a half ago I met a man who owns a machine shop... His buisness was making tubular parts for telescopes. Mostly he just loads raw material and watches over his machines as the computer tells them what to do... 20 years ago an employee would have been required for each one.
Pinky's Brain (grandparent post [slashdot.org]) had a very good point about stimulus checks for all citizens. No more of this 1 in 7 on foodstamps [cnn.com] crap - everyone should get foodstamps, or a guaranteed basic income [richardccook.com].
There's always work to be done, it's just a matter of organization, and matching available hands with tasks. Money is the organizing principle that allows us to value other peoples' labor. The true distortion in the economy comes from allowing privately owned banks to expand the money supply by a factor of 10+ by making loans. The Fed's recent Quantitative Easing policy is a step in the right direction, because it finally creates a little bit of interest-free money (90% of the money the Treasury pays on the $600 billion in bonds that the Fed will buy will be returned to the treasury - see Ellen Brown's What's Really Behind QE2? [webofdebt.com]).
hope that helps. :)
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Empirical fact remains that all in all, from one generation to the next, our individual quality of life has been improving since as far as our capacity to understand what historical conditions where like and there is no basis of fact to suggest that imminent change is looming in the next couple of generations. In fact there are plenty of signs to the contrary: world fertility is stabilizing, our relationship with the environment is steadily improving on a number of fronts over the past 30 years; etc etc.
Yes innovations frequently provide unwanted and unintended consequences; anti-biotics has spawned us the problem of super-viruses, but we are still overall better off. You say "get us out of the mess that the intelligence and resourcefulness of mankind got us into.". So does this mean you shun all technology and innovation (including your computer and your Internet); if so that is your personal wish but it is in my view a sub-optimal position.
In additional to this, our capacity to weather calamities has improved too. Inspite of this, as far back as our history allows us to perceive, there has never ceased to be a parade of people who insist that the worst is just around the corner, or an appreciable audience for such doom-sayers.
Yes - the big one may come; an asteroid impact, a zombie virus apocalypse, or some other biblical end-time event. The closest credible threat in living memory, and what I consider to be a real threat was the threat of nuclear annihilation that pervaded from the 60s to the 90s
I minimize 'alarmists', such as what you admit to be, and with respect, because I once perceived the world as I believe you now currently perceived it. I minimize them because although the alarm bells they ring resonates deep in all of us and trigger deep seated fears, including myself, their position has no empirical support and as such their instance that their concerns require broader community mindshare without basis; and as such are deservedly minimalised. Should an issue materialize where there is no reasonable, rational doubt that it is a real and significant problem, we may indeed find ourselves in a position we cannot do anything about it, but you can be personally assured that everyone around you, including myself, all 7 billion of us, will be thinking very very hard about the problem. Of course, to this I can always count on people with your mindset to point out - too little! too late! You need to starting thinking about these things now! This is what this meme demands of us in order for the meme to continue to thrive and propagate.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a lazy fucking layabout I assure you there are many more of me, and a guaranteed basic income reads as nothing more than me never having to work a day in my life, for anything, ever.
Many, many millions of others will look at it precisely the same way.
Fuck the collective good, I'll get mine.
This is a fact. This is reality. This is why communism never works and socialism always slowly fails. There must be a way to purge the system from those who will suck all they can from society but never add one bit of their own work. That is nature. In a small group you can kick members out -- kibbutz communes and such. On a larger scale, you wind up with the Russian solution -- that is, you kill people.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok? Good for you? That's a hobby?
I can't tell this to you more clearly.
If my housing and food were guaranteed to be paid for, for the rest of my life, I'd never bother doing a damned thing past that. I'd have endless hobbies and diversions and time-wasters, but I'd not get a job. I know this about myself. I also know I am not alone.
If you look at societies where people are handed all they need to survive without ever having to do anything on their own.. that's about as far as they make it. Sure, some will work hard for really no reason, but many will just choose to exist. And fill the time with drugs, and with sex, and other "vices". This is human nature. We are selfish and exploitative.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't work -- no large screen TV's for you...but you get your food...
What's wrong with that?
You just want to sit and be a vegetable? We can probably make it so that you'll use very few resources -- you'll benefit the nation.
So the problem with this is?
This nonsense gets trotted out every time someone comes up with providing basics for all guaranteed.
Thing is, is that *MOST* people in the US want more in life.
Your "logic" is very flawed.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:3, Insightful)
If we lost access to foreign oil all at once, that's true. But otherwise we have the technology and the resources to replace 100% of our foreign oil consumption with renewable sources. "We" don't do this because there is no one "we", the corporations making the fuel and who have to be displaced in order to move forward are making plenty of profit and see no reason to change. Nobody making decisions today is likely to feel the full effects, so why worry?