The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 516
Returning to the original purpose of this article... Just because we now know
that fossil fuels are far more abundant than it was ever thought possible, it
doesn't mean we should be using them. Gasoline and petroleum diesel fuels
are poisonous. They have always been poisonous, and they will always be poisonous. What's more, the additives selected by the oil industry that are required
to make gasoline and petroleum diesel fuels non-corrosive and anti-knock are
even more poisonous than the gasoline and diesel fuel. Further, there is no
such thing as clean coal. It's possible to reduce the harmful effects of mining/processing/burning coal, but not to entirely eliminate the terrible effects. And
as the population continues to grow, and more coal energy plants are used, the
harmful effects continue to grow in the aggregate even if individual plants spew
fewer emissions.
Ironically, regardless of one's position on man-made climate change, ethanol is
the solution. Whether ethanol should be a long-term permanent replacement
for petroleum oil fuels, or just a mid-range solution until electric and electricpower generation from a harmless and low-cost renewable source can come
into dominance, both sides of the climate change argument should rally around
ethanol. Only the mistaken belief that there is something wrong with ethanol which is usually funded by the oil industry - stops people on both sides from
unanimity on ethanol's benefits.
If catastrophic man-made climate change is real, and it is not too late to prevent
the cataclysmic results, then ethanol should be immediately adopted as the
world's primary engine fuel because it would mitigate any further damage. If
catastrophic man-made climate change is a myth, we still have pollution, diseases, war, and a struggling national economy to worry about. The switch to
(domestically produced) ethanol would immediately end and erase all of these
problems.
Alex and Kathleen frame their entire position
on the argument that "mankind’s use of fossil
fuels is supremely virtuous— because human
life is the standard of value." Using their own
measuring stick, it must be concluded that using fossil fuels are immoral, and that the proposition that fossil fuels are moral is just as immoral.
At the top of this story, I mentioned that Alex
Epstein's website states that he "will accept a
debate any time, any place." On January 19th, exactly one month before I wrote
