Laughable Lies From The Ethanol Lobby

Regarding "Clean-burning biofuels can gives us true independence" (Wednesday Outlook), writer Bob Dineen of the Ethanol lobby would have us believe not only that the Ethanol in our fuel supply has no downside, but that it is responsible for 100% of our domestic energy revolution.  He starts out with a couple of whoppers, first suggesting that our dependence on imported petroleum products declined from 60 to 41 percent from 2005 through 2012 due to Ethanol production, when in reality it was the revolution in oil drilling technologies like Fracking and horizontal drilling that produced the bulk of the turnaround.

 

He then states that since 2011, American-made ethanol has contributed more to the U.S. fuel supply than gasoline refined from oil imports from OPEC, failing to point out that OPEC has always been a minority exporter to the United States, and that their percentage has been steadily falling.  Dineen also fails to mention that Ethanol is used virtually exclusively in the production of gasoline, while only 40% of all crude oil is used to make gas.

 

Take next his claim that Ethanol production does not raise food prices.  He proudly claims that "Only 14 percent of the average household’s food budget goes toward raw agricultural ingredients such as corn".  What he doesn't tell you is that while this is a world-wide average that includes industrialized countries like America, it is not true for the rest of the world, which spends 25 to 50 percent of their household budget on foodstuffs.  One of the reason Mexico is rightly angry with America is the soaring cost of corn flour, which has increased 350% since the year 2000, mostly due to Ethanol's distortion of markets.

 

Dineen claims that "U.S. ethanol production uses only 3 percent of global grain supplies", deceptively conflating corn with all other grains.  What he doesn't tell you is that 40% of the world's corn is produced in the U.S., and 40% of that production goes to Ethanol, clearly more than enough consumption to drastically affect not only the price of corn but its availability as a foodstuff.

 

The most benign but laughably refutable of Dineen's statements, though, has to be this one: "If ethanol is bad for cars, then why do racecars, which demand high-performance and zero errors, use it"?  The simple answer is that race car engines are used only a few times before being completely rebuilt.  The complaint about ethanol is its tendency to degrade over time into an engine destroying sludge that accumulates on engine parts, particularly well known to owners of recreational vehicles and gas powered tools.

 

If these are the best arguments that the Ethanol Lobby can make, they should rightly fear for its future.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress