Yes, get rid of it. Take it behind the barn and kill it with an ax. It was always stupid, but in a time of possible food shortages, and oil at historic lows, it’s an insane policy. We had stopped using food for transportation at the turn of the 20th century, but these morons decided to bring the notion back.
5 thoughts on “The Ethanol Standard”
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P.J. O’Rourke would be proud!
Only if you agree to remove all energy industry mandates and start over with an even playing field. That includes all taxes on nuclear power to fund wind and solar, actual cost of hydro-electric, and remove the US Navy from the Middle East. They send most of their oil somewhere else, so we shouldn’t have to protect them at our costs. Or, include the cost of protecting oil producers and their infrastructure in the calculations. Then, yes, remove the mandate. Otherwise, no.
I’m comfortable with that. But how success are political attempts that try to do everything at once? You know, like Obamacare?
The ethanol subsidies are low lying fruit. It’s very easy to start with them as a start to widespread removal of energy production subsidies.
So you don’t believe in change of any sort, Art? Because you know full well you’ll never get all of that. How about taking incremental benefits when they are available? Or are you just an impractical, pie-in-the-sky libertarian posturing like they all do?
I am not in favor of the ethanol mandates or subsidies.
When corn is used to make ethanol the amount of carbohydrates in the corn is reduced and the amount of protein is increased. I have seen no data that fully compares the total nutritional value of the corn before and after the production of ethanol. Such a comparison would be interesting and should be made before saying the food is being wasted to make ethanol.
The oil is removed and not wasted.