Bush: Use Ethanol to Get Off Oil
March 6th, 2008I see dead people.
Via: CNN:
President Bush said the United States should “get off oil” Wednesday as crude prices hit record highs and renewed his support for ethanol use despite concerns the corn-based fuel is driving up food prices and isn’t more environmentally friendly than gasoline.
“We gotta get off oil, American has got to change its habits,” Bush told a crowd at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference, a meeting of global energy officials and an adjoining trade show that’s the largest all-renewables show ever held in the United States. “It should be obvious to all, demand has outstripped supply, which makes prices go up.”
As the conference got into its second day, crude oil on the New York mercantile exchange jumped nearly $4 on falling oil inventories, trading over $104 a barrel and setting a new all-time record.
Part of Bush’s plan to wean the country off oil includes big investments in ethanol.
The energy bill passed by Congress and signed by Bush in December calls for refiners to replace 36 billion gallons of gasoline with ethanol by 2020, up from about 7 billion gallons today. About half of that will come from ethanol made with corn.
“That’s good if you’re a corn farmer, and it’s good if you’re concerned with national security,” Bush said.
Bush acknowledged some of the problems with ethanol, particularly its role in pushing up the price of corn. The price of corn has doubled since 2006 which has pushed up the price of chicken, beef and poultry – livestock fed with corn.
Also, crops like wheat and soybeans are becoming more expensive as farmers devote more acreage to grow corn as they rush to satisfy the demand for ethanol.
“I’m beginning to hear complaints from cattleman about the price of corn,” he said. “We’re going to do something about it.”
Bush said his administration has spent over $1 billion to make cellulosic ethanol – which can be made from non-food plants like grasses or wood chips – cost competitive. He also highlighted the use of biodiesel, which is diesel fuel made from agricultural and food waste.
“I’m confident the United States can meet those goals, for the sake of national security and the environment,” he said.
Ya know, when Bush speaks anymore, especially about CORN (as if I didn’t know it already), there is some kind of wild insanity going on here.
I mean effing insanity.
Dodo speaks:
‘Part of Bush’s plan to wean the country off oil includes big investments in ethanol.
The energy bill passed by Congress and signed by Bush in December calls for refiners to replace 36 billion gallons of gasoline with ethanol by 2020, up from about 7 billion gallons today. About half of that will come from ethanol made with corn.
“That’s good if you’re a corn farmer, and it’s good if you’re concerned with national security,” Bush said.
yessiree, grow corn for fuel, and not to feed people and that’s good for national security.
Whose national security?
Secretary – please dictate this memo to Bush. People are going to starve for national security (u nimrod). Stop.
You are going to cause (and they are already occurring) riots over food. Stop.
Do you get it. Stop.
Please. Stop. Stop killing people either directly. Stop.
Or indirectly.Stop.
Every time you open your blankin mouth another million die. Stop
The Economist, March 1 – 7 2008 vol 386 number 8569 page 38 has a good 1/2 page on ethanol production and water usage as well as stats food prices.
So did Foreign Affairs May/June 2007.
Seems anyone who has looked at the numbers knows this is only good from the subsidy side.
Jatropha is a plant that can grow with minimal water in fallow soil, yeilds diesel with a better energy payoff than any other plant, and burns very cleanly as well. Nobody in the U.S. it seems is talking about it. It seems like there’s a huge market opportunity for people who own real estate in New Mexico/Texas, or in more arable land that has a 19-22 degree centigrade average temperature, to grow diesel with very little invested.
It is possible that Bush is just an idiot and any top-down energy policy is doomed to fail, but it is a plain, systemic fact that the easiest way to depopulate the world is to constrain the supply of oil and food.
With an energy policy like this we had better get used to the idea of mass graves.
Jatropha has good energy density per hectare…not quite as good as palm oil but jatropha doesn’t require the removal of rainforests. Also interesting are the possibilities presented by oil producing algae. However even if they get the algae thing right there are much more vable methods than internal combustion…
Bush may be an idiot, but the people who pull his strings aren’t. Their friends at ADM are very happy with the arrangement. It’s just another case of elites making their rich friends richer. And if it squeezes the rest of us, more’s the better.
Another superior source of biofuel is algae. It’s been suggested that the tons of animal waste currently choking our rivers and laying waste to the Gulf of Mexico could be used as feed stock for the algae, which has the best eroei ratio out there, thus killing 2 birds with one stone. But it won’t make ADM or the rest of the giant agra-businesses richer, so it’s never discussed. As Kevin likes to point out, there are lots of solutions, but our “free market” won’t let them develop because the sociopaths at the top of the food chain can’t maintain their monopolies if they do.
Saying “Let them eat cake!” or the equivalent thereof, will only work for so long. Then people will start stealing feedstocks for these plants and trying to disable them. And, if pushed far enough, eventually people will react the same way they did the last time someone said “Let them eat cake!” one time too often.
The French still remember that lesson.
I’ll say it again, Mr. Bush. Hemp, not freaking corn!
Of course, you would never hear Bush say that Americans might want to consider driving fuel-efficient cars (i.e. the opposite of SUVs). Only problem is, the big corporate guys would lose their mega-profits. Can’t have that – it’s better to let the poor suffer higher food prices – after all they can’t afford SUVs anyway.
I just KNEW that when GW started spouting off about getting on to ethanol that we were in for higher food prices and that ADM et al would be creaming in their pants. Think about it. We suffer higher costs simply to live so that a few pennies can be potentially shaved off at the pump. I can’t drink premium gas!