This isn't really the forum for this, but I should clear up a few
misconceptions...
On Wed, 10 May 2006 13:39:01 -500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Government bureaucrats demand higher car fuel efficiency, and then mandate
the use of Ethanol, which is less fuel-efficient.
It is still 1) cleaner, 2) produced domestically, 3) see below.
Based on information from the web the energy cost of producing Ethanol
from corn is nearly the amount of energy within the product.
First, there have been some criticisms of those energy budgets, since
it all depends on what you include in your calculation of energy
production:
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2005/04/comments_on_eth.html
Second, that's in part due to lobbyists in the private sector,
specifically the corn lobby. Brazil uses sugar(cane) ethanol, which
produces some 8 times as much energy as corn ethanol, but the United
States will be using corn ethanol because the corn lobby is much
bigger than the sugar lobby.
Third, if you factor in the money that we spend through the Defense
Department to protect our oil interests abroad (tens of billions of
dollars), plus recently slapping on $200 billion for the Iraq War, oil
is far more expensive than ethanol. Those are costs that we could cut
(through lower taxes) if we didn't have to support such a big defense
budget. You have to factor in the hidden costs.
Martin
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