Good article today about the ‘corn to ethanol’ scam that sucks up and wastes valuable water, pollutes the environment and subsidizes the Red States, at a cost of hundreds of billions, while fertile ground, that could be growing FOOD,, is used as a government subsidy.

What began as a bribe, from GWBush, to get the farm states on board with his boondoggle in Afghanistan and Iraq, has become an ongoing scam, where drivers subsidize the farm states.

Although it is hyped as an elixir for what ails the Earth, ethanol has long been a disaster that we can’t seem to remedy. Calling it wasteful and inefficient doesn’t begin to list its drawbacks: It costs more to produce than gasoline, reduces mileage, corrodes gas tanks and car engines, pollutes air and water and, by requiring more energy to produce than it yields, increases America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Although gasohol releases less carbon monoxide than gasoline, it emits more smog-producing volatile organic compounds. And ethanol plants produce more pollutants than oil refineries, including high levels of carcinogens, thereby routinely violating already relaxed pollution permits. In 2007, under industry pressure, ethanol plants were exempted from the EPA’s most stringent pollution regulations.

Of all crops grown in the United States, corn demands the most massive fixes of herbicides, insecticides and chemical fertilizers while creating the most soil erosion. Producing each gallon of ethanol also results in 12 gallons of sewage-like effluent, part of the toxic, oxygen-swilling stew of nitrates, chemical poisons and dirt that gets excreted from corn monocultures.

And it is dropping the world’s largest freshwater aquifer at an alarming rate.

From Kentucky to Wyoming, this runoff pollutes the Mississippi River system, harming aquatic animals all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, where it expands a bacteria-infested, algae-clogged, anaerobic “Dead Zone.” In 2024, this Dead Zone was about the size of New Jersey.

Thanks to billions of dollars in tax credits, rebates, grants and other subsidies pumped into corn ethanol production, farmers are motivated to convert marginal ag land to corn plantations. Some farmers even drain wetlands, the most productive of all wildlife habitats.

Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who died in 2019, was the first agricultural scientist to expose ethanol production as a boondoggle. While his data is old, it provides a snapshot of our current situation and a valuable model for groups such as the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit “holding polluters and government agencies accountable under the law,” as it digs out the real costs of gasohol.

Without even factoring in the fuel required to ship ethanol to blending sites, Pimentel found that it takes about 70% more energy to produce ethanol than we get from it. Then, figuring in state and federal subsidies, he found that ethanol costs $2.24 a gallon to produce, compared with 63 cents for gasoline.