The Ethanol Myth

"What we need now is a serious debate on national energy policy. At least in the short term, turning fields of corn or grain into ethanol will not significantly reduce what President Bush describes as our addiction to foreign oil. The pro spects for ethanol from cellulose may be more promising than is the case for corn, but the benefits, assuming they exist, surely lie a decade or more in the future. We must forgo looking for scapegoats: the oil companies did not get us into our current pickle and their profits (approximately 8 percent of revenues) are not obscene. We should support politicians who are not afraid to articulate bold new suggestions with clarity and honesty. But we should be hardnosed in holding to task those who would propose easy fixes. Senator John McCain was not totally out of school when he summed up the corn/ethanol energy initiative launched in the United States in 2003 as highway robbery perpetrated on the American public by Congress. We must be careful not to buy into excessive hyperboleabsent careful analysisas we search for alternatives to vulnerable supplies of imported oil.

Michael B. McElroy is Butler professor of environmental studies. An extended, more technical discussion of the issues raised in this article is available on his website, www-as.harvard.edu/people/faculty/mbm."

http://harvardmagazine.com/2006/11/the-ethanol-illusion.html