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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. ...
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