The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 7 of 13)

. Couldn't you find any other source for this? br> -- Elaine Kyle /p> p> Your writer Mr. Peters only lightly touched on the subject of ethanol production. This production, in addition to costing the taxpayer billions of dollars in direct subsidies, is an eminently energy-negative process. It uses diesel-powered tilling machines, petroleum-based fertilizers, again diesel-powered planting and harvesting machines, and diesel-powered trucks to transport corn to processing plants; these plants use coal/gas/oil-fired electric power to heat and process the corn into ethanol; then diesel-powered trucks transport that ethanol to mixing plants, etc. The energy balance of this cycle is negative, meaning that ethanol production results in more imported oil than it replaces. br> -- Marc Jeric br> Ph.D., Engineering (UCLA '68) /p>

I sure wish someone would calculate and publish the amount of fossil fuel it takes to produce 1 gallon of government-subsidized ethanol.

p>As for fossil fuel itself, it's hard to get worked up about its consumption when one considers P.J. O'Rourke's astute observation: it's not doing any good sitting in the ground. br> -- R. Trotter /p> p>

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