Do You See The Light?

Support for Ethanol subsidies are now out of favor with the green elite. According to a WSJ editorial, the WaPo and TIME magazine have both "concluded that food-to-fuel mandates have failed."

All we can say is, welcome aboard. Corn ethanol can now join the scare over silicone breast implants and the pesticide Alar as among the greatest scams of the age. But before we move on to the next green miracle cure, it's worth recounting how much damage this ethanol political machine is doing.

To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell's David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can't compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America's corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption.

Just because everyone now knows it's a sham, don't look for subsidies to be repealed, mandates to be lifted or tariffs on imported Brazilian sugar cane to be reduced. And that's another trouble with gub'mint solutions. Perhaps the mandates might be scaled back, but the subsidies will be around 'till the end of time. As far as I know, the Federal government still subsidizes mohair because it was a vital component in WWI military uniforms.

Will anybody learn? It was clear from Senator Obama's speech last night, that the Democrats are poised to double down and harness the power of Government to "create millions of green jobs, &c..." I love Megan McArdle’s' take:

Gack. Now Obama is ranting about how he's going to make the corporations give us super fuel-efficient cars, find awesome new sources of oil, make renewable energy affordable, and invent a really delicious fat-free ice cream. However did we manage to get through the first 200 years without Barack Obama to beat some progress out of the corporations that have been holding us back?

Oil and Energy Posted by jk at May 7, 2008 12:44 PM