In 2007, the US Government, despite the fact that Ethanol is the wost alternative energy source, spent $3 Billion on Ethanol. Solar, wind and Geothermal, which could prove to be our Nation’s salvation to so many problems one doesn’t know where to begin to list them all, received just $750 million while biodiesel, got $180 billion. This demonstrates the power of the oil and farming lobbies, both whom benefit from Ethanol. Sure solar, wind and geothermal could create millions if not billions of jobs, remove the need for foreign oil and move us to carbon neutral status (perhaps even carbon positive…or negative depending on which way you want to term a move to the better), and could be used to power homes on a mass scale, not just primarily for transportation; and sure biodiesel, unlike ethanol, could be made without sacrificing food and/or feed crop, and without food/feed crop space and uses far less oil to produce than ethanol, but why let these facts gets in the way of a politician pocketing some money. Why should the government do what it can to help the environment or the people of the US get high paying jobs when they can take the money for themselves and run?
Unfortunately, Obama’s initial stimulus plan doesn’t include an infrastructure upgrade which would create far more jobs and have a long lasting positive step on the economy, but hopefully after they get past this rushed version they’ll work on improving the nation’s infrastructure to support a move to solar, wind and geothermal… there is no reason we couldn’t get nearly every ounce of our energy needs from the three.
hat tip: Who wins federal dollars race? Ethanol does, by a long shot. An older story I meant to comment on a long time ago…
I suggest seeing King Corn just to see how important corn is to the farming industry and how they manage to get corn into everything… everything, despite it isn’t really that healthy for you.