This website has written on numerous prior occasions urging the federal government to abandon its costly, ill-fated experiment with ethanol.
And while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has temporarily stopped mandating increases in ethanol production (it actually lowered this year’s requirement from 16.5 billion gallons to 15.2 billion gallons), the government is still neck deep in an industry where it doesn’t belong.
This isn’t just a Barack Obama problem, either … the original ethanol mandates were signed by former president George W. Bush (and ethanol subsidies and regulations were embraced during the 2012 presidential campaign by GOP nominee Mitt Romney).
Yup … both major parties are “in the tank” for Big Ethanol, which is why we’re only seeing a modest retreat on this issue when when what’s needed is a complete and total abandonment.
Ethanol has been a disaster on every front. It hasn’t reduced greenhouse gases (the stated purpose for its passage) and has actually caused tremendous environmental damage in America’s heartland.
It’s also jacked up food prices by tying up more than 40 percent of America’s corn harvest.
Millions of Americans have also been put at risk by these mandates – as the higher ethanol concentrations increase the risk of engine damage in all but the very latest model cars (which most Americans can’t afford).
Ethanol is a case study of what happens when government tries to pick winners and losers in the marketplace (and then predict how their newly manipulated market is going to fare): They pick losers (and miss predictions).
“Not only must the federal government put an immediate end to its ridiculous ethanol mandates (and do away with farm subsidies and tariffs against imported sugar-based ethanol), it must stop intervening in the marketplace and let the free flow of capital determine the most efficient way of developing and mass producing renewable fuels,” we wrote last September.
Over a year later, we’re still waiting …
18 comments
I like me some corn likker, er, ethanol!!
For you Sakerlina fans….
Corn don’t grow at all on Rock Top
Ground’s too rocky by far
That’s why all the folks on Rocky Top
Git there corn from a jar…
Ethanol production using Genetically Modified Corn is an Obama problem. North American Millers Association (NAMA), which represents 43 major food companies including General Mills and ConAgra Mills fought Obama’s Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) against using a recently FDA approved freakish gene spliced corn imitation to be used for ethanol production.
In 2011, when Obama was using the NSA and the IRS to crush the Tea Party with illegal government intrusions and failing to approve tax exempt non-profit applications, Obama’s FDA quietly approved a “corn” plant called Enogen for use by a company called Syngenta. This freakish gene spliced plant, according to our Center For Food Safety, has not been tested for irreversible genetic damage to children and adults who eat Enogen.
You see, Syngenta gene-spliced corn to make a new species of corn that contains high levels of a heat-resistant enzyme that breaks down starches in corn into sugars, the first step in the conversion of corn to ethanol. Syngenta’s freakish GMO corn is to be used to make ethanol. The problem is, according to scientists and food supply experts is this “corn” from FDA approved Syngenta will get into corn for human consumption!
Right now, around 40% of US corn production goes into converting corn into ethanol, an alcohol used to dilute gasoline. Syngenta, with blessings from Obama’s FDA against all warnings, is planting 60,000 acrs of the freakish Endogen corn.
It would take ONLY one kernel of Endogen corn mixed in with 10,000 kernals of food corn to ruin corns food processing characteristics. One kernel in 10,000 would make corn made products break down on shelves or our panyry’s to become uneatable!!!
Not to mention cross contamination in corn fields and you have an Obama approved food source catastrophe. This Endogen is so bad the European Union has rejected Syngenta’s applications to market this freakish corn, Endogen!
I am an Agronomist by education. For those who don’t know the term, it is that of a Soil and Plant Scientist. My study was that of Plant Science with a minor concentration of Business. I have spent a career in industry using the latter.
This is not an Obama problem. It is a plant breeding/genetic modification problem/opportunity. It is a problem/opportunity that has been years in the making and one that has been predicted by leading research scientists from day one of genetic engineering.
Our trading partners, including the European Union, Japan, China, and others have all rejected GMO’s at various times; some for political reasons and some for scientific reasons, but mostly the former.
Genetic Engineering is a complex science, understood and mastered only by a few brilliant scientists, and very much subject to criticism born of uninformed opinion sorely lacking in fact and scientific principle.
The genie is out of the bottle. Like most technological advances of the present and past, is of great benefit to society, despite its problems and challenges along the way.
Let’s make one thing clear, agricultural innovation through plant breeding and genetic manipulation has been a long time in the making. Any fool operating in ignorance of science who thinks Obama is the culprit of the issue raised and the science of plant breeding, deserves the scorn and ridicule coming his way.
For the record: corn/grain based ethanol is an abomination on US and World agriculture. It is a high cost spoiler of land, water, and other natural resources. It is an industry made of whole cloth sponsored by the American Farm Bureau, the National Corn Grower’s Association, and 3 multinational grain companies including Cargill, ADM, and Louis Dreyfuss. For the record, American Farm Bureau has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party for the past 40 years.
It is the spawn of the late Dwayne Andreas of ADM who adapted the AE Staley company’s method of “wet milling” process in the production of alcohol based fuels through distillation, high fructose corn syrup production, and brewers grains for feed production and other uses..
Obama didn’t have a damn thing to do with the issue you raise.
Correction: Andreas still lives, his son has served Federal time for price fixing; Louis Dreyfus has little involvement; Andre of Switzerland has almost none; and those US farmer owned co-ops who produce ethanol will give way to the leading multinationals, Cargill and ADM.
Well posted sir.
Unfortunately a SOME posters on this blog as well as TEA partiers don’t have the mental capacity to understand your synopsis. They want to blame the entity their “handlers’/puppet masters” tell them to because it dosen’t involve individual thought.
I was ambivalent about the whole thing until I saw what it was doing to my motorcycles and other vehicles not designed for this shit.
Trey Gowdy and the rest of the ass kissers for the far right need to quit worrying about kissing the TEA partiers in their district and get to the job of killing the whole ethanol BS, enact REAL no BS tax reform, quit their petty bickering and get on with the job of getting this country back on an even keel before the whole thing topples over.
it if DOES topple over, it will be just as much Trey Gowdy and his ilk’s fault as it is Obama’s.
Doesn’t Brazil use a LOT of ethanol (from sugar cane) for motor fuel? How do their autos stand up to it?
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Also, one’s saliva also converts starch to sugar, presumably by an enzyme. The reaction itself is no health hazard or alchemist’s conjuring.
What part of Obama’s FDA approved the freak corn despite warnings and dangers do you not understand. Obama owns the approval of Enogen.
Sorry, but haven’t we alread had this discussion?
Kind of, but this better focuses on suggesting the government just butt out. Regarding Ethanol requirements, I agree wholeheartedly myself.
Ethanol, HFCS, we really rely way too much on corn, and government is definitely responsible for helping us get into that predicament.
Stealing taxpayer dollars to subsidize corporate farms. Par for the course.
The potato calling the kettle black. Tsk Tsk.
I subsidize corporate farms because Doritos are amazing. What’s your point?
I wonder if a potato would provide better yield? Hmmm.
Potatoes get kettle cooked by the ton. We’re drowned in vinegar and dusted with barbecue debris. Sometimes, we’re given ridges. Crime of the century.
Yummy
Humans should not burn their food supply in their cars. Besides, it ruins the outboard and weed trimmer motors.