For people in production agriculture, these soaring new sources of crop demand are pretty heady stuff. They are creating ethanol euphoria,

—Keith Collins, Chief Economist, USDA, 2006

Ethanol used to replace gasoline is 200 proof corn whiskey. If it would stabilize the climate, there would be no shame in letting our cars drink good whiskey. But as with most subsidies, the corn-whiskey subsidy likely has more to do with local profits than with global policy. In this case, that would mean production agriculture, ethanol refineries, and as it’s called in the Midwest, ethanol euphoria.

For the past five or six years a controversy has raged around whether corn ethanol is green. Does its production and use, in place of gasoline, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help reduce global warming. Throughout this debate, one factor has been consistently ignored—the world oil market. As this chapter shows, that changes everything. ...