A Guy With Interests in Ethanol Shamelessly Defends Ethanol

It's like people aren't even trying anymore. You used to have to do a quick google search to find out which pocket your columnist was in - - now it's right there at the end of the article:

Christjansen is president of the Indiana Ethanol Producers Association.

Ok. Let's hear what Mr. Christjansen has to say about his paycheck.

Imagine if today we had a viable alternative to gasoline; an affordable, proven and domestic fuel that cleaned our air while creating American jobs.

Someone invented a more affordable hydropowered engine? Are we using, like, liquid oxygen now? Or did someone invent that fictional engine from Atlas Shrugged that generates power from the static electricity in the air? Is air the fuel? Sweet! The future is now!

Imagine next that Congress, while doing the bidding of friends in Big Oil, conspired to kill that fuel in order to maintain the status quo and our failed energy policy that guarantees big profits for oil companies.

Bastards!

This is the reality that ethanol faces. With so many rumors and untruths, it is crucial to get the facts straight.

GASP! I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING!

Ethanol is the only viable domestic alternative to gasoline,

Let me stop you right there. I know you're about to go on and talk about how much corn we have and how we can produce ethanol cheaply and all that jazz. A few points first.

1) We have plenty of other fuel options. Many of them are "viable." I know you will make the case that ethanol is the most affordable, and you will be wrong. More on that in a second.

2) Why do we have so much extra corn in the first place? Perhaps it's because we're telling and paying people to needlessly grow it. As this NYT article points out, by subsidizing the cost of corn, the aforementioned in-the-pocket-of-Big-Oil Congress has artificially inflated the demand for corn, driving supply up to the point that the US is the #1 supplier of corn TO THE ENTIRE WORLD (40% of the total production comes from the US). Which is not a bad thing considering how many starving people there are in China/India/whichever country your Mom used to admonish you for not clearing your plate. Bottom line, we're producing more corn than the market demands, buying it at artificially inflated prices, and essentially giving it away to the rest of the world.

3) We're not even giving it away to the rest of the world anymore. From the same article above, 40% of American corn must go to ethanol production, per legislation in 2005 and 2007. So how exactly is Congress protecting the status quo by killing the corn subsidy? Seems like they're doing the opposite of that.

Christjansen goes on to talk about Indiana's corn production and its role in all of this. Skip ahead, skip ahead.

Ethanol accounts for nearly 10 percent of our fuel supply in a country that uses approximately 400 million gallons of gasoline per day. With the cost of oil over $100 a barrel, ethanol costs Big Oil more than $120 million per day in lost sales. Since it is more inexpensive than gasoline, ethanol helps to bring down the price of fuel at the pump for consumers. According to one Iowa State University study, ethanol reduced wholesale gasoline prices by $1.37 per gallon in 2010 in the Midwestern region.

This is mularky. Are you honestly trying to tell me that a mere 10% of the oil supply, was enough to bring down the whole sale cost of gas by over a dollar. If the average price of gas was $2.726 at that time, you're telling me that ethanol, which accounts for 10% of the overall market, brought down prices by almost 50%?! You, and the corn-choked state that put out that study, are lying.

Also, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, the US can presently produce 7 billion gallons of ethanol a year, or a little more than 1.9 million gallons per day. So, America's corn farmers would not be nearly as impacted by this change as Christjansen posits. Unless we were importing ethanol from other countries to which we had shipped corn for ethanol production, and we're not.

The sudden halt in ethanol production, accounting for additional imports, increased transportation costs, and lack of additional oil refining capacity, could cause gasoline prices to rise by as much as 92 percent, according to the same Iowa State study -- which at today's prices could mean gas eclipsing a staggering $7 per gallon.

Again, I call shenanigans. Sure, the price of gas could rise over $7 a gallon, and it could do that for any number of catastrophic and unforseen reasons (tornados in Missouri drove prices up across the Midwest for almost all of June, for instace). But, this is, again, ridiculous. The vast majority of Americans do not use gasoline with ethanol in it.

Two final points:

Hoosier families are tired of high gas prices and pinching pennies while their monthly budgets are being controlled by the whims of shahs and dictators in the Middle East and oil companies reap billions.

Gas prices are already high. How is ethanol going to help this in the future if any ethanol fuel source must be mixed with actual gasoline?

And it must be mixed with gasoline to combat the lie that people like Christjansen will tell you:

[Ethanol] cleaned our air.

Nope, it did the opposite. Ethanol produces almost twice as much smog-inducing carbon monoxide as gasoline. So...it distorts domestic markets, pollutes our air, (potentially) ruins our farmland by driving us towards the less-sustainable one-crop landscape we're currently seeing in the Midwest, and does absolutely nothing to help bring down the price of gasoline, which is as much controlled by Mideast supply decisions as it is by domestic oil commodities speculators.

But if you ask the dude who needs ethanol to sign his paychecks, this shit is like butta.