What is ethanol? Is it for real?

Ethanol is a fuel produced by distilling biomass into a liquid form. It is less fuel-efficient than gasoline, providing approximately two-thirds of the milage per gallon than gasoline does. A bushel of corn provides about 2.7 gallons of ethanol, which translates (at 66%) into about 1.8 gallons of gas.

Turning a bushel of corn into 1.8 gallons of gas sounds like a neat idea, doesn't it? There's a few hitches, though. First of all, corn requires a lot of water. 132 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced, to be precise. That's about 60 times more water per gallon than gasoline takes.

(For clarity's sake, all ethanol discussed below is corn ethanol unless otherwise indicated.)

But it's just water.

Not a big deal when you're making a few gallons of ethanol. But the United States has a gasoline habit of 375 million gallons per day. Keeping in mind that ethanol is only two-thirds as effective as gas, to maintain the same milage, US citizens would have to buy approximately 570 million gallons of ethanol to make up the difference.

That's more than 75 billion gallons of water per day, if we tried to switch to all ethanol. But even trying is impossible, because in order to make that much corn, we would have to devote 546 million acres of cropland to corn production -- and there are only 440 million arable acres in the United States.

So we know offhand that switching entirely over to ethanol is a non-starter.

But every little bit helps, right?

Helps who?

Do what?

The ethanol zealots say over and over that ethanol is the pathway to something called "energy independence". Energy independence is simply the ability for the US to survive without buying oil or other energy forms from other countries.

It sounds like a great idea, but here's the thing: The US doesn't have enough biomass that it's not eating in order to supply anything close to the oil habit we have. We could seriously take 100% of our corn and turn it into ethanol...and it would reduce our oil purchasing by a whopping 6%.

But Brazil achieved energy independence, and they're the world's leading ethanol producers!

True on both counts -- but the statements are not related. Brazil produces sugarcane ethanol (which is 8 times more energy-effecient than corn ethanol, by the way), and uses slave labor to do it very well. Quite apart from that fact, Brazil has massive offshore oil assets -- and it's from those assets that Brazil gets it's energy independence.

It's no wonder that the Government Accountability Office said that ethanol "[does] not significantly reduce petroleum imports. Therefore, [it] does not significantly contribute to US energy independence."

In 2003, now presumptive Republican Presidential nominee John McCain was a self-styled truthteller, happy to go against the grain. Listen to his then-opinion on ethanol:

"Ethanol wouldn't exist if Congress didn't create an artificial market for it."
"Ethanol does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase our energy independence, and nothing to improve our air quality. Let me repeat that for emphasis. It does nothing to reduce fuel consumption, nothing to increase our energy independence, and nothing to improve our air quality!"
"Plain and simple, the ethanol program is highway robbery perpetrated on the American public by Congress."

Now what could cause McCain to rail so vehemently against something that most other politicians cannot wait to condone? How about the fact that ethanol costs the American taxpayers upwards of 40 billion dollars every year?

Wait. What?

Yup. You see, corn is the most subsidized crop in the US, recieving nearly 10 billion dollars a year in taxpayer money. On top of that corn subsidy, corn ethanol in particular has it's own set of subsidies -- $1.87 per gallon produced. That, too, comes directly from the taxpayer's pocket.

But wait! There's more! Ethanol also gets a tax break, not at the pump, but for the companies that produce it: $.51 per gallon. Of course, that money has to be made up elsewhere -- which means your pocket and mine come April. That's a total of $2.38 per gallon produced over those two Congressional mandates, times 18 million gallons produced per day (average over 2007) is just under 430 million dollars per day, or over 15 billion dollars over a year.

Of course, we haven't explained all 25 billon yet. Here's the real kicker: Ethanol consumed 20% of our corn crop in 2006. Less corn for feed resulted in higher demand-vs-supply, and thus a higher price for feed. That higher price got passed on to the consumer (of course) in the form of higher prices in 2007 on beef, dairy, pork, poultry, sugar, and cereal. In the end, we ended up paying about $2.80 in extra food costs per gallon of ethanol produced.

That's another 18 billion dollars that you and I paid indirectly to fund our ethanol habit, for a total of 43 billion. That's an average of $142.29 per person (and you know not everyone pays taxes!).

Archer-Daniels-Midland. You may never have heard of them, or you may be one of the hundreds of thousands of their employees. ADM is a criminal enterprise that controls more than 25% of US ethanol production. By way of introduction, allow me to expound on ADM's criminal record:

1996: ADM is convicted of price fixing lysine and citric acid, and fined $100,000,000; at the time, it's the largest fine ever collected by the government.

1999: Three ADM executives are convicted of price fixing, and they all go to prison, paying 190 more million dollars along the way.

2004: Still failing to learn their lesson, ADM settles a civil suit against them for price-fixing of corn syrup, this time to the tune of $400 million.

These guys are still allowed to be in business?

Yes, they are, though apparently not a capitalist one. Dwayne Andrew, chairman of ADM, said in 1995:
"There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country."

So, it should be no surprise that when ADM decided to get into the ethanol industry, it took its slimy ways with it. For example, between '89 and '06, ADM purchased both the corn and ethanol subsidies discussed earlier by spending more than $79 million dollars on campaign contributions to prominent politicians. Most notable among these was Bob Dole, who squeezed pro-ethanol legislation into several unrelated bills passing through Congress.

James Bovard of the Cato Institute said more than a decade ago that "every dollar of profit Archer-Daniels-Midland makes from ethanol sales costs the American taxpayers thirty dollars."

What jerks.

Oh, it gets worse. Not only is ADM fleecing every single American taxpayer with it's purchased subsidies and hype, but they're starving people to death, too. According to Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, "The amount of grain needed to create enough ethanol to fill one SUV's gas tank would feed a human being for a year."

It's criminal enough of ADM to play the system and get in bed with Congress for its own profit. It's immoral and just plain evil of them to take food that could be going to fill the stomachs of the world's starving people to line it's executives profits.

Whether it's for altruistic ends in the attempt to feed the starving, or for purely personal reasons -- I want my $140 back -- it's high time that Congress stopped playing ADM's game and took an honest look at the three-card monte that is US ethanol production.