Using Food For Fuel An Easy Sell

[User]

OPINION: I enjoyed your column on energy immensely. Our politicos are far too quick to jump on the newest green initiative without considering the peripheral damage.

I believe it is borderline criminal to force the shift to ethanol-based fuels when the technology dictates that the cheapest way to produce it is to use the method which doesn't use grasses and stalks and wood chips, etc. and also requires more energy to produce than you obtain by burning it. Added to this is that when the government subsidies required to make this stuff halfways economical come off (say, when we're dependent on the it for fuel), paying $140 a barrel for oil will seem positively cheap. What happens to the economy then?

The idea that ethanol is carbon neutral is a canard because plants only store carbon when they're alive. Burning it releases the stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Those lovely leaves in the fall are busy releasing their stored carbon back into the atmosphere as they decay.

The largest component of greenhouse gases is water vapour. Water vapour traps far more heat than any other greenhouse gas per unit volume. Burning anything, along with normal evaporation and plant transpiration, releases water vapour. How do we control that? But I digress.

I'm all for making ethanol out of plant material, but not food crops. Why not legalize industrial hemp production? This plant has all manner of uses from food (hemp oil) to very strong fibres. It can also be used to make ethanol and lubricants and will grow almost anywhere you can coax a plant to take root. There seems to be a whole bunch of tobacco farmers that need a cash crop that doesn't kill people. How about hemp?

Until we move past the archaic notion that industrial hemp equals marijuana, the government is going to keep paying farmers to use food crops for fuel because it's an easier sell.

We need politicians who are statesmen and visionaries. Too many are in it to get re-elected and so refuse to make the hard choices.



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Source: Owen Sound Sun Times
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Contact: Owen Sound Sun Times - Ontario, CA
Website: Owen Sound Sun Times - Ontario, CA