There’s a big debate brewing in the Senate over mandating a significantly increased use of ethanol in vehicle fuels.
Pros?
Cons?
And, perhaps, one other con, which would counter the asterisks (*) above. Does ethanol use reduce oil imports?
Maybe not. As you may recall from the beef story — and similar stats are quoted in this news article — there’s a lot of petroleum-based fertilizer that goes into corn production. Depending on who you believe, it actually might cost more oil to produce that ethanol than its use will save. That leaves alone the pollution from nitrous fertilizers used in corn growing.
I’d really like to believe in use of ethanol — it seems like an easy, “green” way to wean us off of petroleum. I’m just not sure that it isn’t a used-to-be-Dole-now-it’s-Daschle pork barrel for his corporate sponsors and farmland constituents.
Instead of mandating increased use of ethanol, why not mandate increased fuel mileage? There is NO better way to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
I tend to agree. Mandating solutions to a problem is usually less effective than simply mandating performance targets. That’s the way it usually works in business, anyhow.
But, then, we get back into the poltical advantages for Mr. Daschle to support ethanol production.