What’s the Real Debate About Biofuels?
Posted: October 4, 2007
The anti-biofuel crowd is a strange mix. Biofuels are probably the only thing in history to bring the petroleum industry and environmental extremists together. As the distinguished minister and Harvard University divinity professor Rev. Dr. Peter J. Gomes wrote, “we should be known by the enemies we make.”
Last week, National Corn Growers Association CEO Rick Tolman wrote a column, “Pro or Con, Let’s Have a Real Discussion About Biofuels” and suggested ethanol opponents and supporters quit arguing studies and opinions and instead have a real discussion.
Tolman suggested four questions to start people talking:
- How much are we willing to depend on imported oil for our energy needs, and at what cost?
- Who should decide this nation’s alternative fuels policy? The government? The energy industry? The marketplace?
- How can we best deal with the end of 10 years of artificially cheap corn prices?
- How can we help advance the opportunities to produce ethanol from other sources?
Those are some excellent questions, and this is just the forum for that type of discussion. Give us your comments, and if you know someone with a different point of view from yours, ask them to post their opinions, too.
Don Griffiths Said,
October 4, 2007 @ 6:13 pm
I have a weekly blog on my web site listed above, and every week for a zillion months now, it seems, I have been harping on the very thing Rick Tolman suggests for a platform for discussion. I started out much more simplistic by suggesting that all Americans should be thinking ‘alternative energy sources’—alternative meaning anything besides oil. Sadly, what has happened with ethanol was so easily predicted that in fact I did! Big oil has a bewildering array of ammo when it comes to methods for denouncing the amazing increases in ethanol uses, now and planned for the not too distant future. Even food companies, eager to expand profits after a long period of extreme competition and tight margins, have joined the anti-high corn prices rhetoric as ‘the’ reason for higher food prices.
Even the American Coalition for Ethanol—finally—are coming out with a work paper explaining away the myriad of reasons given for planting (no pun intended) high priced corn deep in a hole. Of course the difference is that those of us who are valiently attempting to set the record straight are doing so in a fragmented fashion—some articles today, a couple of paragraphs tomorrow. In fact the print media and of course TV are hot on a regular basis to decry high priced oil AND take potshots at any and all reports having to do with food prices going up regardless of where the blame lies.
So, it’s a great idea—this thing of creating a platform for logical(?) and thoughtful discussion on energy. In fact it would be super if we could actually get TV time with notables and non-notables who would discuss the reality of our near-term reliance on oil but the dream of a longer-term policy geared to some agreed-upon form of energy independence. Is this serendipity, or is America ready?