Monday, June 23, 2008
Obama and Ethanol [Andrew Stuttaford]
There's an interesting piece in today's New York Times on Obama's support for corn-based bioethanol. You can take or leave the implications the story's writer is clearly making about the candidate's connection with the ethanol lobby, but, regardless, at least some of the Democratic candidate's thinking on the topic is obviously sensible, if unexceptional. The U.S. must indeed reduce its dependence on oil for both political and economic reasons. But is heavily subsidized midwestern bioethanol the way to go? It doesn't seem to be (not least because of what we now know to be its impact on global food prices). That doesn't seem to have deterred Obama, a supporter of the recent subsidy-laden farm bill. Worse still, he's an opponent of relaxing tariffs on imported Brazilian sugar cane ethanol, a far more energy efficient fuel than its corn-fed alternative.
The Times notes that: Mr. Obama has not explained his opposition to imported sugar cane ethanol. But in remarks last year, made as President Bush was about to sign an ethanol cooperation agreement with his Brazilian counterpart, Mr. Obama argued that “our country’s drive toward energy independence” could suffer if Mr. Bush relaxed restrictions, as Mr. McCain now proposes.“It does not serve our national and economic security to replace imported oil with Brazilian ethanol,” he argued.
That's a curious remark, to put it mildly. Buying imported oil directly or indirectly enriches hostile dictatorships like Saudi Arabia or Iran, importing sugar cane ethanol enriches Brazil, an infinitely more benign proposition. The Times goes on to report that Obama "talk[s] regularly about developing switchgrass, which flourishes in the Midwest and Great Plains, as a source for ethanol." So he should. It's promising, but not for years, much like the drilling for oil off the U.S. coast that Obama opposes partly because it will, uh, take too long. Odd, that.
06/23 11:25 AM
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