This by Bogdan Kipling is the best that I've read about the disaster that is our ethanol/energy policy. As Kipling points out, we are taking corn out of the mouths of the hungry in order to fill our gas tanks. It's just not right. And, maybe worse, it makes no sense.
Why do we do this? To appeal to the voters in our first presidential primary for one. Also, the powers that be are frightened by the tyrannical eco-lobby which has no balance. If you're in Congress and stand against ethanol, you stand, therefore, against The Earth. The only things worse than that are smoking and not wearing your seat belt.
The bottom line to me is that this is, as Kipling so finely points out, an economic policy so terrible that it's unethical. Taking corn off the self to put in our gas tanks is driving basic food prices through the roof. And for what? So some of us can feel good and others of us can win in Iowa. The ripple effects are beyond the imagination.
It's time to stop. Take the ethanol subsidies and use them to build nuclear power plants. Or use them to develop clean coal technologies and alternatives to the combustion engine. Use them to dig tar sands. Put that money into something that doesn't drive up the price of tortillas for every poor Joe in Costa Rica who's having economic trouble enough as it is.
If our friends inside the Beltway can't figure this one out and can't do anything about it, we should all be worried about our Future.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment