The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 479
TAR SANDS AND FRACKING
Wolfram and Shughart write about the potential of oil from tar sands and fracking; what a wonderful world it will be. Well, I have news for them, gasoline and
diesel fuel made from tar sands oil, and fracking is just as poisonous as gasoline
produced from a Saudi oil well. And if you're interested in protecting beautiful
landscapes, forget tar sands mining and those 'fracking' horizontal wells.
While I'm on the subject of the environment, Gary Wolfram does what Bill
Shughart tried to do, frighten the public with alarming news from a questionable
environmentalist group that the American Prairie is rapidly shrinking. And Gary
tries to do what Bill did - blame it on
ethanol...blame it ALL on ethanol.
So, to Gary Wolfram, I write what I
wrote to Bill Shughart: "There are a
wide number of reasons why prairie is
being lost. In Indiana, for example,
they lose about 200,000 acres of
farmland per year to urban growth. If
you're not a fan of shopping centers
and new housing communities I guess
you could call it a "barren landscape,"
but the only way you could blame that on corn is to complain about the popcorn
they sell at the new movie theaters. However, to anyone serious about this subject I would recommend you read "Vanishing Open Spaces" by Leon Kolankiewicz, Roy Beck, and Anne Manetas. Their study provides a rather excellent
breakdown of the loss of open space and the problem of urban sprawl and population growth, and they don't seem to have an oil industry-sponsored agenda
to blame it on corn. In fact, in the entire study, which covers about 100 pages
of text, charts, and tables, they only mention the word "corn" one time."
WATER QUALITY AND AVAILABILITY
Regarding water quality and its availability in the corn crop states, if these are
really serious issues then do something about the oily runoff from parking lots
and paved streets after a rainstorm. Ask the more than 10,000 golf courses in
the states that feed into the Mississippi River to stop using water and fertilizers
- it's just a silly game with a little ball, for crying out loud. If quality and availability
of water is so important then why waste it on golf courses?
