The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 305
development of new oil-based products and keep alcohol production too costly,
finally making it completely illegal from 1920 to 1933, thereby handing the oil
companies a monopoly on producing vehicle fuel.
From 1973 to 2003, for example, the Federal government paid $74 billion for
energy subsidies to support nuclear power and fossil fuels, compared to just
$26 billion in subsidies during the same time frame for renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency. In August/September 2008 Congress authorized $25 billion in subsidies to go to the U.S. automakers to help advance future
fuels and technologies. Not one of the three Detroit automakers stepped up to
claim some of that money. However, one month later the CEOs of the three
companies went to Washington to beg for subsidies to allow them to continue
making gasoline-powered vehicles. The government gave GM and Chrysler
more than twice what they offered for future fuel and technologies subsidies,
and the only people who benefited from this are the oil companies and OPEC.
It is the oil companies and OPEC that should have bailed out Detroit, not the
American people. The gift to GM and Chrysler of billions in dollars, and the right
to scam shareholders and debtors out of untold billions more is as much an
oil/gasoline subsidy as if they handed all that money directly to the Saudis, Iran,
and Hugo Chavez.
It’s amazing that opponents to alt-fuel subsidies think it’s okay to subsidize oil
and gasoline R&D but that it’s suddenly un-patriotic or anti-free market when it
comes to subsidizing something that might wrest power away from OPEC and
the oil industry.
YOUR REPORT TO THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
The report you wrote for the Federal Reserve Bank presents many of the same
incorrect and misleading points that you made in the interview. However, the
report goes much further in making outrageous claims (by you directly or via
the use of quoted citations) with greater expansion on those statements made
to the John Stossel interview. I’ve listed several of them below, with my comments. I stopped at just nine examples for the sake of some brevity and because
there becomes a redundancy in your opposition to ethanol and your false statements that don’t require reiteration.
1. You write, “If ethanol is truly economically competitive with gasoline
absent government preference - as many of its supporters seem to believe
- then private investors will produce ethanol for the market regardless of
whether government lends a hand (Tyner and Taheripour, 2008).”
