EATING AT THE LOCAL "ETHANOL DINER"

“FOOD” ETHANOL IS NOT SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE.

Last August I wrote a letter to the editor questioning the morality of burning food or corn/ethanol in our vehicles. That valid question is even more real to me now, since a proposed corn/ethanol plant would be nearly visible from my home. I remain convinced that the production of “food”/ethanol is simply wrong and others around the world are beginning to agree.

A June 12, 2007 article states; “China’s communist rulers announced a moratorium on the production of ethanol from corn and other food crops yesterday at the very time that Western leaders are rushing to embrace alternative food-based fuel technology. Another Chinese decision states that “...as droughts, and pollution have led to hundreds of millions of people going without regular drinking water… calculated each gallon of ethanol required 8.310 gallons of water for growing corn and another 30-37 gallons for conversion to fuel…if they are using corn for fuel, they are not going to get the water free”.

In America, the land of free flowing streams and clean lakes, we have yet to consider water as a limiting factor. During my career, I often told students and anyone who might listen that we would one day pay a very high price for drinking water and may see bloodshed over water rights. Those days are here sooner than I expected. We are now paying eight dollars or more per gallon for drinking water just to appear fashionable. This could easily become mandatory as competition for clean water increases.

Also, I believe it is morally wrong for any company to have unlimited use of our groundwater and then return their polluted water to our streams. That is just what Gulfstream Bioflex, LLC, has stated in court will happen if their plant is constructed east of Rogersville. This should alarm everyone within a hundred mile radius, not just a few of us who live near this site! I have full confidence in the professional staff of MDNR to see that this does not happen through their permitting system. Our objective now, is to insure that each and every questionable detail is covered prior to the issuance of any and all permits.

Oh yes, just in case you thought you would be burning ethanol “Made in America” to help our farmers, you should know this. On top of the federal ethanol mandate, federal law grants a 50-cent tax credit for each gallon of ethanol a blender buys. Both domestic and imported ethanol qualifies for these subsidies. Chinese ethanol, however, benefits from one additional U.S. subsidy. In 2004, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im), a federal agency that finances the exports of U.S. companies, subsidized construction of an “ethanol dehydration facility” in Trinidad and Tobago—exactly the sort of facility through which foreign ethanol passes duty-free into the U.S. So much for “made in America”!

In his essay Who Owns America? Dr. John Ikerd, University of Missouri, said it best. “Many issues concerning the natural environment are fundamentally moral or ethical issues. We should not be buying and selling pollution rights, because no individual has the moral right to pollute in the first place, and thus, has no right to sell it…Pollution of the environment is fundamentally, morally wrong, the same as it is morally wrong to kill, to steal, or enslave.”

To further quote Dr. Ikerd, “Any system of development that is not ecologically sound and economically viable and socially responsible just quite simply is not sustainable over time.” In my opinion, the ethanol scam fails the test of all three. The high use of water, natural gas, corn and the resultant pollution of air and water make it ecologically unsound. Without tax subsidies it is not economically viable. And due to both of these, the production of ethanol is most certainly not socially responsible. Given time, the ethanol initiative will ultimately fail. The landscape will be left with tax constructed monuments to short-sighted greed and to a government’s rush to quick-fix the fuel problem.

David E. Pitts, Certified Biologist
Rogersville, Mo.