Are Ethanol Opponents Sniffing Glue? Something Is Making Them Dizzy!

by Marc J. Rauch (The Auto Channel) ... In preparation for this hearing and EPA process, a group called American Council For Capital Formation (an oil industry lobby shill group) commissioned a report from Dr. Daniel De La Torre Ugarte, Research Professor, Department Of Agricultural And Resource Economics University Of Tennessee. A press release regarding the report can be found by CLICKING HERE. The entire report can then be accessed via the press release.

The bottom line in the newest ACCF and Dr. Ugarte's attempt to vilify ethanol is that if any of the conclusions contained in the report were significant and relevant that the report should call for the immediate closure of all golf courses located in the states that border the Mississippi River, or that have rivers and streams that feed into the Mississippi River. Did you know, by the way, that there are approximately 10,000 such golf courses and they all use fertilizer. Do we really need to have people wasting their lives with a silly game when there are hundreds of millions of starving people in the world?

These golf courses are in addition to all the corporate and educational campus lawns located in those states, not to mention all the residential communities, all of which use fertilizer that eventually gets washed into the rivers, streams, etc., etc.

In the same vein, I'm wondering why there is no general hue and cry to stop new vineyards and hop fields from being planted. I don't know how much you guys know about wine and beer, but as a wine and beer aficionado I can tell you that we don't need any new wines or beers. We have plenty, and there's never a shortage at supermarkets and liquor stores. Perhaps the American Council For Capital Formation should address the crucial over-supply of wine and beer issue at a later time.

And don't forget that all of these golf courses, campuses, residential communities and ever-increasing number of vineyards and hop fields require care and maintenance that utilizes tractors, lawn mowers, small engine tools, other service vehicles, and of course all the personal internal combustion engine vehicles driven by the patrons, employees, students, home owners, etc. I can't even imagine the quantity of harmful emissions spewing out of all these machines. Do you think Dr. Ugarte has an agricultural model that can calculate this?

Something else just occurred to me, Dr. Ugarte does know that all of these activities involves soil erosion, doesn't he? If so, how can he in good conscience worry about soil erosion from corn farming? Maybe if everybody just stayed home and lived off the nutrients carried in the air and vitamins from natural sunlight we'd all be better off?

Incidentally, how much harmful engine emissions and soil erosion goes on around the world that's caused by military efforts that are needed to defend oil production and shipping. Let's see, there's aircraft carriers, destroyers, tanks, jet fighters, tankers, jet bombers, jeeps, humvees, staff cars, bombs exploding, the production of all the materiel. There's also the loss of American lives, but I'm sure you guys can't concern yourselves over these trivial people.

But what really makes me wonder if Dr. Ugarte knows anything about the overall issue of using ethanol for fuel is his (and ACCF's) overall attack on biofuels. He and you act as if fossil fuels are not poison; as if the entire fossil fuel industry has not required trillions of dollars in subsidies; as if gasoline and petroleum diesel does not damage engines; as if gasoline is a superior fuel to ethanol; as if there are no environmental and health problems arising from fossil fuel production and use; and as if ethanol (or a logical anti-knock ingredient) is not needed in high-compression engines. Without ethanol we have leaded gasoline or gasoline with MTBE or gasoline loaded with toluene. READ MORE