The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 601
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/01/obama-moves-to-cut-oil-subsidies_n_816787.html
• http://themoderatevoice.com/78678/unemployment-benefits-and-oil-subsidies/
• http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/oil_company_subsidies.html
• http://energydeals.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/obama%E2%80%99s-bid-to-end-oilsubsidies-revives-debate/
• http://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Oil-Slickers.pdf
• https://www.yahoo.com/news/decades-federal-dollars-helped-fuel-141648115.html
• http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Estimating_U.S._Government_Subsidies_to_Energy_Sources_2002-2008
• https://www.eli.org/research-report/estimating-us-government-subsidies-energysources-2002-2008
FOOL OR FUEL?
Bryce titles the header for his discourse on this issue as “Food Or Fuel?” But
my title is actually far more appropriate because anyone who participates in
disseminating or believing the food vs. fuel argument is a fool. You may recall
that in Robert Bryce’s email response to me that he stated, “I am fundamentally
opposed to use of food to make motor fuel.”
The basic premise is that corn is being taken out of the mouths of starving people and turned into ethanol just to enrich greedy farmers and distillers. We’ve
all watched those Sally Struthers’ “fly-in-the-eye” TV shows where she asks for
donations to feed the starving African children. So that’s the image that the oil
industry wants the public to visualize, and that’s the image that far too many
fools in the public choose to go with.
Unfortunately for the oil industry, it is a completely and totally false image that
when you know the truth it only makes you laugh in amazement that they are
able to get away with this nonsense.
Let me start with the most palpable image, the starving African children. If corn
was no longer used for ethanol does that mean that we would see images of
African children sitting around a campfire eating delicious corn on the cob
smothered with butter? No. Why not? Well, because the world outside of America doesn’t eat corn the way that Americans do. They don’t like it, they don’t
know it. They eat wheat. Corn is not wheat. Cornmeal could be used in some
circumstances in place of wheat, but they like wheat.
