The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 396
And how is it that you don't seem to know that there was never an ethanol
subsidy, there was a biofuel subsidy that went to the blenders (the oil industry),
not the ethanol producers?
People used to say, let's end the "ethanol" subsidy that makes ethanol-gasoline
blends cheaper than ethanol-free gasoline and we'll see that ethanol can't compete in a free market. Since 2011 we've been able to see how well it competes:
ethanol-gasoline blends are still cheaper than ethanol-free gasoline...STILL,
and sometimes it's a lot cheaper, often $2-$3 cheaper per gallon than ethanolfree gasoline.
In fact, what's interesting is that service stations that sell E85 and E10 still have
the same general price difference they had before the subsidy ended. E85 sold
for about 50 cents less than E10. The subsidy provided about 50 cents per
gallon, leading many to believe that the biofuel subsidy accounted for that difference. But E85 is still about 50 cents less per gallon than E10, so that means
that the consumer never benefitted from the subsidy, only the oil industry benefitted - they never passed the benefits to the consumers. E85 should probably
have been about $1 less per gallon than E10.
There's also no "ethanol mandate." There is a biofuel mandate, not an ethanol
mandate. I'm curious to know why you don't know why ethanol is necessary.
Don't you own a car? As a teenager did you never sit around talking cars and
engines with your buddies? Don't you know that gasoline without an anti-knock
additive will destroy a car's engine? Even if you didn't know that ethanol was
the first additive that could tame knock in a high-compression internal combustion engine, didn't you know that tetra-ethyl lead was the oil industry's answer
to engine-knock (instead of ethanol)? Didn't you know that tetra-ethyl lead is
deadly to touch or inhale?
Didn't you know that the oil industry's solution to tetra-ethyl lead was MTBE,
which is also poisonous; and don't you know that the oil industry's current alternative to ethanol-gasoline blends is gasoline with significant quantities of other
poisons such as benzene and toluene?
Don't you know or care that hundreds of thousands of American servicemen
and women have been killed defending the oil industry around the world? Do
you not know that no American soldier, sailor, or airman has ever lost his or her
life defending ethanol fuel production and distribution?
Barry, you then move into a series of lies and misinformation about corn crop
land use, food deprivation, ethanol EROEI (energy returned on energy
