The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 480
Here's another thing, why are people in the Midwest trying to grow wine grapes
and make wine? Don't they know there's a water shortage? There's no shortage
of great wine from California or Australia or Brazil or Spain or Italy or France
(well, yes there is a shortage of good French wine, it almost doesn't exist, except in some people's imagination). But we certainly don't need to be wasting
valuable water on mediocre Midwest wine (sorry, Midwest, but I am a California
wine snob).
Of course, the funniest and most ironic part of the whole 'water' issue is that it's
brought up by the oil industry and its stooges. How many more water disasters
do we have to experience before it's completely clear to everyone that the oil
industry couldn't give a rat's brass ring for what happens to our water and the
animals that depend on it.
And if growing corn is so damn harmful, why the heck are we still selling popcorn at movie theaters and carnivals. Don't those people have chocolate bars
they can get fat on?
Mr. Wolfram brings up the garbage about 40% of the corn crop being used for
ethanol, thereby robbing starving people of food. This is a ridiculous, ignorant
out-of-context old statistic. The percentage of corn being used for ethanol is
about the same as it's been for decades. Yes, on a tonnage basis more is being
used for ethanol, but because farming techniques have improved and more land
is used the percentage has stayed relatively static - so there's more for everybody. In addition, the more corn being used for ethanol the more distillers grains
are available to feed livestock; this means more beef and other meats for humans to consume...and in case you haven't noticed, Gary Wolfram, meat is
food, too!
Then, to top it all off, if the corn industry went away tomorrow, the farmers
wouldn't grow so much, so it's not like there would be an even greater surplus
to feed people in other countries who can't pay for it. You're supposed to be a
real, live professional economist; why do you need me to tell you this?
The thing that makes me laugh the most about people like Gary Wolfram is that
I get the sense that they know nothing about engine fuels. I don't even find any
evidence that these guys own a car or that they know how to drive. And I have
never, ever come up against one of these oil industry-paid professors who has
been able to cite an actual bad experience that they had using an ethanol-gasoline blend. Sure, I get anonymous cranks who claim to be engine mechanics,
but the only thing they know about automotive engines is how change oil and
spark plugs.
