> The food riots that are circumnavigating the globe could become almost
> as death-dealing as your Nincompoop-In-Chief's two FAILED wars.
>
> But we don't hear a peep from your White House war criminal that his
> failed plot to "cure America's addiction to oil" should be revised way
> downward -- or better -- discontinued and replaced by workable
> solutions.
>
> No, the worst "president" in U.S. history doesn't admit mistakes.  And
> there's good reason.  He'd spend most of his time admitting his
> mistakes!
>
> Mr. Sloan reminds us that there WERE other alternatives, roads not
> taken.
>
> -----------------------------------
> "The Ethanol Cure's Side Effects"
>
> By Allan Sloan
> Tuesday, April 29, 2008; D01
>
> Now that milk and gasoline can each cost $3.50 a gallon, filling up
> your grocery cart or sport-utility vehicle has become an exercise in
> pain. Most people just wince, pay and get along as best they can. But
> someone like me can't help but see these price spikes as a nasty side
> effect of America's ethanol program. How nasty? Think of the recent
> film starring Will Smith, "I Am Legend."
>
> You might ask what the connection is between a half-baked energy
> policy and overdone sci-fi. Answer: the unanticipated consequences of
> supposed miracle cures.
>
> Ethanol first. This corn-into-fuel program has been around for years
> but gained vast new impetus from President Bush's program to cure
> America's "addiction to oil" by using biofuels. We'll grow our way to
> self-sufficiency. Oh, well. Not only are oil prices at all-time highs
> (in dollar terms), but diverting agricultural land to energy
> production -- about a fourth of the U.S. corn crop is dedicated to
> ethanol -- is a major factor in the rise of worldwide food prices.
> We've had food riots in Mexico, Egypt, Haiti and about a dozen other
> countries. There may be worse to come.
>
> Now to sci-fi: If you've seen any of the three versions of "I Am
> Legend," you know that its premise is that a cancer vaccine -- your
> classic miracle cure -- backfires by starting a plague that wipes out
> most of the human race and turns almost all the survivors into
> zombies.
>
> Sure, I'm being a bit over the top here, but the parallel to the
> ethanol situation is obvious: If something seems too good to be true,
> it probably is.
>
> Had the Bush administration and Congress exhibited the wisdom and
> courage to slap a big honking gasoline tax on drivers after 9/11 -- or
> even in 2006, when the president made his "addiction to oil" speech --
> it would have been a better energy policy than the cornographic
> panacea they've given us. We could have reduced consumption, cut oil
> imports, kept low-income drivers whole by rebating their gas taxes
> with income tax breaks, and used the rest of the proceeds for deficit
> reduction or something else useful. Food would be cheaper. So would
> fuel, because demand would be lower and we'd probably have fewer
> financial speculators, who some experts think are responsible for $25
> worth of oil's march from $64 a barrel last spring to nearly $120.
>
> So in avoiding a gas tax, we have not avoided higher prices. We've
> also done something that should horrify anyone who cares about this
> country: transferred hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth to
> oil-producing countries, many of which don't exactly share our
> society's values of tolerance and freedom. (Can you spell Russia?
> Saudi Arabia?)
>
> Even with gas at $3.50 a gallon, I'd be more than willing to pay a
> much higher gas tax than I do now because it would knock down demand,
> cost less in the long run and demonstrate that the United States is
> willing to do painful things in the present to ensure our future
> prosperity. Turning biological waste like wood chips into fuel makes a
> lot of sense. But devoting vast acreage of America's breadbasket to
> fuel is a really terrible idea, as we're now seeing. Supposedly
> miraculous and painless cures have a nasty tendency to backfire. Both
> in scary movies and in the even scarier real world.

>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR200...