Reject backlash against biofuels

Monday, May 19, 2008

From an editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal:

In 1995, before the ethanol boom began, American farmers produced 162million metric tons of corn for food and export.

By 2007, ethanol production was taking 62 million metric tons of corn. So the corn left for food and export was — 308 million metric tons.

That's right, 308 million metric tons — 82 percent more than before the ethanol boom, thanks to higher yields and more land in cornfields.

But how can that be true when, according to the backlash against biofuels, a scarcity of corn — caused by America's diversion of corn into ethanol production — is to blame for world food shortages and skyrocketing prices?

It is true because the backlash against biofuels is based on myth, misrepresentation and myopia, adding up to a failure of reason.

That's why Wisconsin, and all of America, should stay on course with the development of biofuels.

Several posts follow the editorial on the State Journal's Web page, including one that says in part:

Problem: Reduce Pollution – a noble pursuit.

How Ethanol fails: When you factor in the carbon output of producing the crop (planting, fertilizing, cultivating, harvesting), transporting the crop to the ethanol production facility, actually producing the ethanol, transporting (via truck or train, since ethanol cannot be sent through a pipeline) the ethanol to a refinery to be blended with gasoline, and then transporting the finished product to a filling station for consumption, you have produced so much more additional pollution that you have significantly negated any potential gain in pollution reduction.