NRO on ethanol: it's not a good idea
The editors over at National Review Online believe that Republicans are drunk on ethanol. Or most of the Republicans running for president are, anyway. The one contender (sorta, at this point) that the NRO singles out as not being drunk is John McCain who claims, jokingly, to drink a glass of the stuff every morning.NRO says that presidential candidates "discover the miraculous properties of ethanol" every four years when they visit Iowa, and that that is "a depressing ritual." AutoblogGreen wasn't around for the last presidential election, but we'll be happy to look back in 2011 and compare what's going on then with the hoopla today.
So, why does the conservative NRO not like ethanol? Because, they say, it won't solve the larger problem of ending massive imports of foreign oil, not enough cars can even use E85, and in order to make E85 more available, the government would have to mandate that gas stations sell the biofuel. "Liberal groups," NRO says, support that, but conservatives should not.
As ethanol glut brings prices down (see related links below), ethanol supporters are finding themselves in a bit of a pickle. If any of the various cellulosic ethanol plants that have recently been announced actually start cranking out cellulosic ethanol, then many of the problems that the NRO - and many others, myself included - has with ethanol will have been addressed. Until then, we can watch people all over the political spectrum making sure the public knows that ethanol is not the answer, for presidential hopefuls or anyone else
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[Source: National Review Online]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
GreyFlcn 5:07PM (10/14/2007)
Frankly, we need more liberals to realize that Ethanol is not a solution to global warming either.
The CAFE loophole actually increases our oil consumption, and it has no potential to scale up in any timeframe which would be meaningful with dealing with global warming.
And frankly, all ethanol sources besides high-energy switchgrass, and paper mill waste, produces more direct GHG emissions than petroleum.
The concept of spending 20x more subsidies on biofuels than solar is just disgusting.
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Murray Foster 8:14PM (10/15/2007)
Deep geothermal is the most promising area for public moneys to be spent for energy generation technological development. For a comprehensive review of deep geothermal technology and its future direction see the MIT study here: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/future_geothermal.html
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