Greenitforward’s Weblog

A few weeks ago I was reading my Rolling Stone Magazine when I came across an article that just about made sick to my stomach. No, not the one about the Britney Spears debacle on the VMA’s. It was about corn ethanol and how UN-green it really is. In fact, about the only thing that’s even remotely green about it is the money that will be pouring into the wallets of greedy corporate cronies, slimy lobbyists and corrupt politicians.

Now before you jump to say, “Those damn republicans!” I have unfortunate news for you. The democrats are just as guilty. Hillary, Obama and even John Edwards have all been drinking the coolaid, one-upping each other with their promises of support to the ethanol industry should they be elected. Why? Two words: The Iowa Caucus. Okay, so technically that’s three words, but you can’t really count “The” as a word, can you? But I digress.

You see, Iowa is one of the largest corn growing states in the country. It is also the place where John Kerry managed to stage one of the biggest political upsets in recent history. So, if you want to win the 2008 election, you need to win Iowa. And if you want to win Iowa, you need to support corn.

But back to why corn ethanol is such a scam. First of all, we can’t grow enough of it to make even the tiniest of dents in our nation’s oil consumption. Currently, all of the ethanol grown in the U.S. only accounts for 3.5% of our total usage. And even if we turned ALL of our corn crops, that includes the corn we use for food, we would only reach a mere 17.5%. Which sounds a little bit better until you consider what that would mean. Deforestation to create larger farms, starvation for third world countries that rely on our corn as an inexpensive form of hunger aid. And worst of all, no more corn dogs, corn bread or corn chips. No corn on the cob and no popcorn at the movies. Plus no high fructose corn syrup either, which is used in just about everything on the supermarket shelves- but considering it’s a chief cause of the obesity epidemic in this country, that one’s probably a good a thing to lose. But we’ll save that for another blog.

So why is ethanol working so well for Brazil? Because it’s made from sugar cane and not corn. What’s the difference? HUGE. There is something called an energy output to input ratio. Meaning, how many units of energy it actually takes to create one unit of energy that you can use in your car. For example, crude oil currently weighs in at about a 5:1 ratio. So, for all of the mining, shipping, pumping, refining etc, you get a return of five times that energy when you hit the highway. Quite impressive, until you compare that with Brazil’s ethanol which yields a staggering 8:1. So where does corn ethanol place in the standings? A pathetic 1.3 to 1, making it absolutely useless.

But at least it burns cleaner than fossil fuels, right? Nope. Not even that. The emissions from corn ethanol are every bit as filthy as the crap we stick in our cars now.

Well, now that you’re as completely disgusted as I am, I’m going back to reading about Britney at the VMA’s.