I don’t know about Lord Monkton’s statement but I think it is safe to say the ethanol legislation and mandates is a product of the “alternative energy” mantra used by Global Warming alarmists. This mantra has at its core that any use of oil based products is evil, therefore other options must be developed to end the use of the evil oil. Once this weird thinking become part of the accepted thinking a lot of bad things happen. Like Ethanol. I do not believe that it offers any advantage over oil but does offer many disadvantages – inability to be carried in pipelines, destructive to engines, requires government subsidy, and introduces equal or greater environmental damage than oil. And it does have an impact on food prices. I don’t think there is a way that significant parts of the corn crop can be used for fuel without having an upward pressure on the price for corn for other uses. Maybe the laws of supply and demand were waived in the ethanol case and I idid not hear about it.
Ethanol is a good example of how legislatures take an idea that may one day have merit, with a lot of work and private investment, and they totally destroy the idea by replacing private investment with public subsidy. Now corn farmers in Iowa pretty much dictate that ethanol will forever be part of our gasoline, because Iowa is home to Presidential primary kick off. This is lunacy of course, but it is where we are.
Having seen Lord Monkton in action, I tend to put more credence in the excellent work he is doing sound alarms about the fake science of Global Warming than the minor issues raised by this author.
