So, corn-based ethanol is something that has been debated quite heatedly for the past few years. Let me just give you a run down on a brief history of corn-based ethanol. Keep in mind that this is only from what I know, so it is probably on par with Wikipedia in terms of accuracy.
So, about 8 or so years ago, some people did some horrible things in New York City which made a bunch of countries invade Afghanistan. Through some nebulous logic and overblown fears made worse by someone waving around a vial of anthrax, a few of those countries then proceeded to invade Iraq (again). Anyway, this whole fear thing and invading thing made people nervous about using Middle East oil.
That's not a big deal when you think about it. We (the people who live in the so called "West") have always been afraid of the Middle East, from the whole Rome and Cleopatra thing through the WWII invasion of the area and on through the whole Iran hostage thing and beyond. So our relationship with the area has been spotty at best.
No, what really made the situation a problem was what China and India were doing at the time. (Don't worry, this is getting back to corn, I promise!) China and India (who I've mentioned before in a not so favorable light) had to go and grow their economies. I mean, who do they think they are, advancing economically and technologically? So they start sucking down all that Middle East oil that the US has work for a few hundred years to secure. That means that the whole world was going to run out of oil, so we all started looking at new sources of fuel.
That leads me to corn-based ethanol. Yay! All the environmentalists started cheering! It comes from the earth, so it can't be bad!! (Don't tell them oil comes from the earth) Well, everyone started pumping a lot of money and resources into making corn refineries and pretty soon corn prices were going up all over the world. This made livestock people mad and environmentalists mad because it uses more energy to make ethanol than you get out of it and basically the whole thing fell apart like a house of cards.
And it didn't make sense to use corn for fuel when so many people around the world were starving. But what if you looked at it a different way? What if the issue wasn't "Why are we turning food into fuel?" but instead "Why are we eating our fuel?" I mean, what if we came up with a fantastic oil-based pie that is sooooooo delicious? Nobody would let you eat that pie without giving you a guilt trip about destroying the environment. So Green Tip #30 is start guilting all of your friends and family whenever they eat corn based food. "Stop eating our fuel!!!"
Yea that's true but isn't that almost impossible because corn is in practically everything we eat today? Even when you have a hamburger chances are that cow was feed on corn. Cow's had a perfect symbiotic system when they ate grass, 100% powered by the sun. By switching to a corn-based diet, the system is now 100% powered by oil in the form of pesticides, fuel used to transport and transform the corn into something the cows can eat. There's a book on this topic called "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. Just my thoughts, maybe a little off topic.
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