Ethanol Ethics

To folk with an eye to the future alternate energy sources are an obvious way to go. Wind energy, voltaic/Galvanic cells, solar power, geo-thermal, hydroelectricity, tidal power, wave power, radiant energy, and biomass, head the list of these. It is where we are should be investing and developing for long-term sources of energy of the future.

 It is amazing how these concepts are not talked about and even denigrated today. Negativity towards these sources or just ignoring them come from those entrenched in the fossil fuel world. Listening to the ads of BP and the like you’d think they were the economic power saviors of the country. Natural gas is pure, but it will in turn run out. Fracking to develop such sources is fraught with dangers we are not allowed to assess such as the mystery chemicals used in these systems. It is like Wal-Mart advertising its great value to the American dream while it fails to provide living wages to the majority of its employees who need government subsidies to survive; or Heinz when it advertises it “thick” qualities, which seems to just newspeak for hard to get out of the glass bottle.

There is Nuclear power but we have not been able to come with any plausible way to deal with the contaminants it leaves behind.

And then there is ethanol, a renewable resource that farmers love. And now proposals are being made to raise the amount of ethanol to be allowed in gasoline to make it more useable. The farmers love it as it has driven the market up for corn, its primary source up with resulting higher prices. Forty per cent of today’s corn crop goes to the production of ethanol. That’s right 40%.

But there are residual problems with ethanol as well; or those few sentences of change as Boehner says about the current farm bill. Here are some of the problems. E15 (a 15% mix of ethanol to gasoline) we know causes excessive wear on motors and thus more repairs. However, a 51 cent-per-gallon tax credit goes to companies that do this blend; ethanol costs about to a 70 cents per gallon more than gasoline.

Next is the environmental impact of growing extra corn, which requires lots of fertilizer and pesticides – pollutants. Ethanol advocates say it will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but there is no data to support that.

Then there is the obvious result of 40% of corn being used to create a bad fuel, which drives up the price of food.

On our current track ethanol production is ramping up to 13 billions of gallons this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022. I don’t really buy this one as it would take the nations entire corn supply to accomplish it.

But however, you cut it, ethanol seems an incredibly bad sources of alternative energy no matter the short-term benefits to farmers.

 We are called to be the caretakers of the planet upon God’s behalf. This does not seem the way to go about it. A more ethical solution to our energy needs it seems to me to take those funds that underwrite and tax advantages given to this industry could be must be used to work on the alternative energies mentioned at the beginning of this article.