That’s politics for you. Always moving too slowly.

President Bush has called for fuel consumption to be cut by 20% over the next 10 years. Sounds great, and overall it’s a great idea, but his concepts for implementation are not ideal.

Using ethanol as fuel has its disadvantages. It doesn’t really do much for fuel efficiency, and making it can have an impact on other agriculture. There’s only so much that can be grown, after all. This could mean higher prices at the grocery store.

Ethanol is not very competitive. It produces less energy than gasoline and requires a subsidy to keep the prices down. Worse, to grow enough corn to meet the demand this would create would require more fertilizer, which is petroleum based. Kind of funny that it can take more petroleum to grow corn for ethanol than the ethanol would replace.

If ethanol must be produced there are better crops for it that produce far more fuel. If we are to go down this path, I hope we are sane enough to pick the right crops for the job.

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