It’s About Making Babies!

Scott claims that recent reports that ethanol is a stupid choice on the Dilbert Blog. Which means that all the Presidential candidates, Crooked Hilary, Mild McCain, and Barack Obama, are all incompetent for advocating ethanol.

What Ethanol has going for it is national security, and use of excess resources.

It makes sense to raise crops – soybeans, corn, switch grass, whatever – on farm ground that would benefit from growing the crops, using ground that would not have been in production, and using equipment already available. In past years Congress has paid farmers to set aside acreage to artificially keep the supply of grains low enough to keep prices ‘moderate’. This ground could be used to produce product – such as ethanol – that would not impact the primary grain markets.

Brazil enjoys a degree of freedom from OPEC that we can only envy. Even though ethanol costs more to produce than equivalent oil or natural gas energy, they don’t pay anything to the oil producing countries. That is, no one can embargo their oil, and substantially affect their economy or their ability to defend themselves.

35 years ago many of the countries that now embrace a religious hatred of the United States pulled just that stunt. We are still recovering. Just one instance of the setback – at the time speed limits ranged, in Iowa, from 50 (back roads) to 85 (daytime interstates). Detroit was making cars that ran at those speeds, and ‘driving range’ – MPG times fuel tank capacity – was a major marketing feature. Instead of continuing research into efficient mileage ratings at highway speeds, OPEC drove President Nixon to set max speeds to 55 mph. That affected car buyers – and Detroit lost decades, resetting their ‘peak’ mileage speed from 45 MPH to highway speeds. In some ways, especially utility vehicles and pickups, there has been remarkably little advance since then, in engine performance and fuel efficiency.

Unlike Brazil, that burns thousands of square miles of native rain forest each year (how ecologically balanced is *that*!?!), we have a more modest amount of ‘spare’ cropland with farming capacity for producing crops for an ethanol industry. So we run into the problem of producing ethanol instead of food. Which isn’t a good way to keep our nation secure.

Ethanol in the presidential campaign is like everything political – a matter of perception. Like Global Warming (I thought we ended that by keeping Al Gore out of the White House!?), candidates decide which way to advocate, based on how many votes the position will gather. The Bush-Bashers spent years claiming that Ethanol would save America. Now that some programs are in place, food production has been reduced, and the realities of the economics of the plan are starting to scare those that care about costs, now we blame the politicians that believed what they were told – much like much of America.

A cynic might comment that we all have to be more careful about who we listen to, but then where would the advertisers, politicians, and other assorted rabble-rousers be? We see daily and weekly reminders that the votes for a candidate depend on the number of campaign dollars raised and spent, and on media coverage. Which kind of implies that elections are about money rather than what citizens want or need. Perhaps candidates should be forbidden, under penalty of law, from stating anything other than to answer a direct question, and that be limited to 15 words. Maybe allow one MS Word campaign statement when they register to run, limited to one page, single spaced, 14 point font, 1 inch margins on sides and top. One additional page might include a 3×5 portrait or group picture with the candidate, and any biographical infomration they want to present. The objective? To stop buying votes, and instead rely on Who the candidate is, What they have done, and on their reputation. It couldn’t work worse than we have now, and might be a *lot* cheaper.