Let Em Eat Gas!

If you can't afford, stomach, or find a Prius, perhaps you'll want to consider one of the hot new cars that run on gasohol or E85. What's so special about about E85? Well, it's considered environmentally friendly (by environmentalists) because it's made from corn. That's right, you can now run your automobile on government subsidized alcohol which allegedly pollutes less than regular gasoline and is cheaper because of those subsidies. It's a dream come true for vegetarians except for those who think plants are sentient but that's for another time.

So here's the idea in a nutshell. You take millions of acres of corn intended to produce food for people and animals and convert the whole operation into gasohol. It's a brilliant concept nearly everyone agrees until the simple folly of a an overly simple plan is elucidated by those like yours truly.

With your government's help, in the form of $1.4 billion in subsidies, you get the following:
Far less feed corn for animals resulting in higher prices for meat and poultry.
Far less corn for export for trade.
Far less corn for feeding the underprivileged in third world countries.
Far less efficiency in producing energy with a possible net loss of energy when the cost of irrigation, shipping, cracking (refining) and cultivation (tractors/combines) is factored in.

In other words, the farmers' boom is the consumers' bust. Like all environmentally whacky ideas, the rush to a fallacious judgment regarding the benefits of kooky non-science will eventually be exposed. One example is the Brazilian paradigm. The Brazilians have practically rendered gasoline obsolete by converting sugar beets to fuel. Sounds great doesn't it? Except it's not so great when you factor in the destruction of the rain forest by slash and burn techniques to clear land for the production of ethanol. I don't suppose the Environmental Lobby would promote the clear-cutting of our national forest lands to grow corn?

And that brings us to the notion of eco-freaks and their half-brained genetic obsession with saving their "personal" planet. Other than the few honest nihilists who lobby for the extinction of humankind, the great majority of supposedly planet-friendly Gorons (honest Al, the working girl's friend) don't give a damn about the environmental catastrophes occurring in third-world and emerging countries as long as their little patch of ANWR remains undisturbed.

Perhaps when tofu is taken off the dinner plate (soybeans for fuel), the Earth First! crowd will wake up to the simple fact that their simple plans fail to recognize the simple truth of physics. In other words, Isaac Newton's to be exact: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Put that in your corn-burning car and smoke it.