More air pollution and destroyed car engines “common-sense solution”

posted at 10:17 am on May 19, 2009 by MadisonConservative

In the Age of Obamius, what else would you expect? After all, coal plants need to be regulated into bankruptcy, domestic oil sources must be forgotten…this was just another step into a greener, friendlier USA:

An effort to raise the 10% limit on ethanol in gasoline has misfired with Wisconsin engine makers Briggs & Stratton Corp., Mercury Marine, and the maker of Evinrude outboard engines.

Testing has not yet shown whether higher levels of the fuel additive are acceptable and safe, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, a Chicago-based trade group, said Monday in a Washington, D.C., news conference.

Increasing the ethanol blend to 15%, currently being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency, could damage or ruin millions of small engines and possibly worsen air pollution, according to the engine manufacturers.

Engine performance and overheating are among the problems, since most boats, lawn mowers and other outdoor power products haven’t been designed to run on 15% ethanol.

…

It’s a common-sense solution to economic, energy and environmental challenges, according to Growth Energy, an ethanol industry trade group that’s petitioned the government for the change.

Testing also hasn’t yet confirmed whether current levels are safe, only that high dosages kill lab animals. Hey, if it’s to save the environment, it’s fine! Rats aren’t part of the environment, anyway.

Now, the United States currently produces approximately one-third of the world’s corn production. We export roughly 20% to other nations, while using 50% for animal feed, and the remaining 30% for food and other uses. Requiring ethanol additives in gasoline puts a burden on our corn supply. How much of a burden? In a few years, the Government Accountability Office calculates, 30%:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Almost a third of the U.S. corn crop will be used in five years to produce fuel ethanol, possibly raising animal feed costs for farmers and meat prices for consumers, a new government report warned on Monday.

Assuming U.S. ethanol production continues to expand to the Energy Department’s projected 11.2 billion gallons by 2012, about 30 percent of the corn crop will be needed for the fuel supply, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “There’s actually a Government Accountability Office?” Yeah, I was as flummoxed as you, but stay focused. Do the math. 30% of our corn crop will need to be diverted to production of a fuel that is more damaging to engines and potentially more lethal to the environment. If this is true, that creating fuel with 10% ethanol requires 30% of the corn crop, that means that increasing it to 15% would require 45% of the corn produced in the United States every year.

Most importantly, where would that corn come from? Are they going to take it out of our animal feed usage first? Perhaps our food and industrial use? Unlikely, according to the USDA:

The tremendous expansion of the ethanol sector raises a key question: Where will ethanol producers get the corn needed to increase their output? With a corn-to-ethanol conversion rate of 2.7 gallons per bushel (a rate that many state-of-the-art facilities are already surpassing), the U.S. ethanol sector will need 2.6 billion bushels per year by 2010—1.2 billion bushels more than it consumed in 2005. That’s a lot of corn, and how the market adapts to this increased demand is likely to be one of the major developments of the early 21st century in U.S. agriculture. The most recent USDA Baseline Projections suggest that much of the additional corn needed for ethanol production will be diverted from exports.

So, basically, ethanol advocates are taking corn out of the animal feed of developing nations, full of starving people. Doesn’t that make them racist xenophobes?

One further question: Why is it whenever oil is defended by a group, they’re immediately dismissed as being in the pockets of Big Oil…but Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group, isn’t dismissed as “Big Ethanol”?

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