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June 23, 2007
Make Bourbon, Not Auto Fuel
Venerable area environmentalist Denny Haldeman has written a lengthy but very readable column regarding the misguided emphasis our local, state and national leaders (and in this instance I use the term loosely) are placing on ethanol from corn as a replacement for petroleum-based energy.
Titled "Ethanolics Unanimous" and containing plenty of other "corny" word play examples throughout, this somewhat encyclopedic article manages to capture the essence (that's French for gasoline) of just how wrong the corn lobby is on this issue.
I'm no agricultural scientist, but it's been common knowledge since, well, almost forever that grasses such as corn — and especially corn — deplete soil of valuable nutrients at a higher rate than they provide a return in caloric output. Furthermore, the varieties of corn grown for livestock feed, and now for ethanol production, are more taxing to the land than is your average table-ready sweet corn. The vast fields of the grain belt are (or should be) planted in an annual rotation, where grains are switched out with legumes (clover, alfalfa, peanuts), because the latter restore nitrogen and other precious elements that the corn uses. The ethanol frenzy threatens this delicate balancing act, as more and more farmers (read: indentured servants of ADM and Con-Agra) are pressured to plant corn exclusively.
And that's just getting started on the myriad reasons why merely substituting ethanol for or adding it to gasoline is a policy slated for failure. Go check them all, and then contact your elected officials with your feedback.
Energy policy , Nature | By joe lance | 02:43 PM