values
Written on 4/29/2008
Look - corn ethanol is basically dumb, and subsidizing it is subsidized dumb. But this isn’t really the problem here:
[From Corn ethanol is the worst thing since sliced Hitler « The Poor Man Institute]
What’s going on? It isn’t that there isn’t enough food. It’s that the ability to fill up a gas tank with gasoline is, in the “wisdom” of the marketplace, the highest value use of the food crop.
[...]
Is the demand for one luxury meat meal really bigger than the demand for ten subsistence grain meals? This is true only if the wealthy person’s desires are valued more than the poor person’s desires. A starving Haitian’s desire for a scrap of bread exceeds your desire for your favorite meal by a considerable amount, but his ability to pay is constrained by your desire for steak.
We’re more concerned with feeding our cars (with corn that could be eaten by people) and housing them (by favoring zoning and urban planning that favors sprawl over density) than in feeding and housing people.
Filed in: observations.
I am endlessly hopeful in the promise of cellulosic ethanol derived from non-food stock. Switchgrass requires almost no care and yields far greater fuel. Wood and other pulp wastes will be similarly effective. I don’t think corn-based ethanol is even “in the black” when it comes to net positive energy output. It takes more energy to make than it yields when you factor in production and fertilizer energy expenditure.
I met a guy on an airplane a few months ago who said his son made more in his few years on a farm than he (the Dad) made in 30 years in the military. How? Corn subsidies for ethanol. More power to the boy-child I guess, but there does seem to be an impedance mismatch when we’re diverting food for subsidized ethanol and simultaneously pushing back on higher fuel efficiency standards. Where is the return on investment in that equation?