Ethanol Eco nomics…

Tom McClintock’s Citizens for the California Republic, 06-18-2007


The public policy farce that the “Green Governor” unleashed with AB 32 (the so-called “greenhouse gas” law) continues. Using their newly granted power to slash carbon dioxide emissions, the California Air Resources Board (all Schwarzenegger appointees) has mandated that every gallon of gasoline sold in California must contain at least 10 percent ethanol by 2010.

First, a few basic facts. Californians use about 15 billion gallons of gasoline a year, meaning that the new ten percent CARB edict will require about 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol. Corn is the most common ethanol-producing crop in the country, yielding about 350 gallons of ethanol fuel per acre. That means converting about 4.3 million acres of farmland to ethanol production, just to meet the California requirement. But according to the USDA, California currently has only 11 million acres devoted to growing crops of all kinds. Get the picture?

The entire purpose of this exercise is to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from California automobiles (although Californians already have the 8th lowest per capita gasoline consumption in the country). And that’s where the public policy discussion becomes farce.

As more acres are brought into agricultural production, the demand for nitrogen fertilizer will grow accordingly, which is itself produced through the use of fossil fuels. And the most likely source of new agricultural land will be converting rain forests to agriculture, although deforestation is already the second biggest man-made contributor of carbon dioxide emissions, ranking just behind internal combustion. And here’s the clincher: ethanol is produced through fermentation, by which glucose is broken down into equal parts of ethanol and – you guessed it – carbon dioxide.

Obviously, this edict will hit gasoline consumers hard: ethanol is less efficient than gasoline and it’s more expensive – meaning you’ll have to buy more gallons at the pump and pay more per gallon.

The bigger impact, though, will be at the grocery store. By radically and artificially increasing the demand for ethanol, the cost pressure on all agricultural products (including meat and dairy products that rely on grain feed) will be devastating. Earlier this year, spiraling corn prices forced up by artificially increased demand for ethanol produced riots throughout Mexico.

The CARB regulations will undoubtedly hit Californians hard – but they will hit starving third world populations even harder. Basic foodstuffs are a small portion of the family incomes in affluent nations, but they consume more than half of family earnings in third world countries.

So when the global warming alarmists predict worldwide starvation, they’re right. They’re creating it.


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I have written a short comic book about why California has a chronic budget crisis (focusing on the neoliberal anti-tax, anti-public sector ideology and its history) that I need an illustrator for immediately. There's a chance it will be printed as a special supplement to the Children's Advocate newsmagazine but that depends on raising funds.
In the future, I have comic books on single-payer health care and undocumented immigration partially planned out and would like to continue producing comic books on hot-button current issues from a left perspective.
If you're interested in short- or long-term collaboration, please shoot me an email.

"Conservatism is not the doctrine of the intellectual elite or of the more intelligent segments of the population, but the reverse. By every measure available to us, conservative beliefs are found most frequently among the uninformed, the poorly educated, and the less intelligent"
McClosky, H. (1958). Conservatism and personality. American Political Science Review, 52, 27-45.

Isn't it about time social scientists pushed media bosses to inform the public of what their research found, and been confirming, since their curiosity was first piqued by the appearance of so many seemingly "normal" Germans who felt their crimes were excusable, and who should be acquitted after simply offering to the court what has since come to be known as the Nuremberg Defense... or "I was just following orders/doing my job"?

So what does that have to do with America today? Everything. They have identified one particular personality as being particularly prone to engaging in those sorts of crimes. Among sociologist-social psychologists they are known as RWA's -- or Right-Wing Authoritarians --- but we know them as "political conservatives". And they share a long list of traits that could be classified as simply "anti-social". Others make a blatantly obvious case for not /ever. hiring such personalities for anything that gives them the power of life and death over others. Their tendency toward "seizing and freezing" on solutions prematurely tunnel-vision and closed mindedness once they reach a decision, are just a few of them. Exaggerated levels of fear and aggression are features of the RWA as well.
“A meta-analysis by J. T. Jost, J. Glaser, A. W. Kruglanski, and F. J. Sulloway (2003) concluded that political conservatism is largely motivated by the management of uncertainty and threat. Medium to large effect sizes describe relations between political conservatism and dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity; lack of openness to new experiences; uncertainty avoidance; personal needs for order, structure, and closure; with exaggerated fears of system threats.”

So. Is the media ownership so afraid of losing advertising dollars that they're prepared to let these people continue obstructing any and all efforts to civilize ourselves? Or will they let them continue the destruction of any and all things their fearful, violent little minds don't understand.

"It appears that conservatism has pathological dimensions manifested in violence and distorted psycho-sexual development" Boshier, R. (1983). Education Inside: Motives for participation in prison education programmes. UBC