NY Times Editorial: Swearing Fealty to Ethanol

[Kolesar]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/opinion/03WED1.html

New York Times editorial
Swearing Fealty to Ethanol
Published: December 3, 2003

The sound you hear wafting across the nation from Iowa these
days is Democratic presidential candidates in full pander mode.
Ambitious politicians seem incapable of setting foot in the
state without genuflecting before the altar of ethanol, a corn-
based gasoline additive.

If ethanol were made from sugar, we would never hear a word
about it until the snows had melted and it was time to start
considering the sacred cows in warmer regions. But it is in corn
country that the first significant event of the presidential
season occurs, and every Democrat with a hope of winning the
Iowa caucus in January is vowing to make every American put
ethanol in the tank. It seems like a very long time ago that
John McCain began his quest for the Republican nomination by
bluntly denouncing ethanol as an environmentally dubious ripoff
of the nation's drivers.

Instead we have Howard Dean, who claims the title of this year's
truth-telling candidate, defending ethanol subsidies as
essential for American security. The nation's spending on oil
from the Middle East undermines peace in Israel and helps Saudi
Arabians underwrite terrorism, he theorizes. If somebody is
going to make money on energy, Dr. Dean says, why not American
farmers "instead of Saudi sheiks?" It's not unusual for
ethanol's defenders to claim that it is the solution to air
pollution, but now it's also an additive to the Middle East road
map.

...snip...
More suggestions that ethanol is only about Iowa. Otherwise it would wither without taxpayer support.

[Creideiki]

1. Has someone claimed the NYT is always right? N/T

[Kolesar]

2. I agree with the NY Times here

There was another Gop candidate (Lamar Alexander, 1996?) who came out against ethanol. He was dead meat when he got to Iowa in the primaries.

Ethanol is better than MTBE as a smog-preventing gasoline oxygenating additive because it is not toxic, but it is hardly a fuel to replace gasoline. The highest number I have ever heard for an "energy multiplier" for ethanol is 1.35. Even with that number, all of the development and topsoil depletion involved means that ethanol from corn is a poor choice. Ethanol from corn is a sop for mega-campaign contributor Archer Daniels Midland.