[Rhodes22-list] Corn - More Politics - real reply

[Robert Skinner]

Please excuse the prior nul content message.  Fat finger.

I see a lot of downsides to using corn as the basis for fuel.

The article, if I got all the content, does not address the 
problem of water pollution from fertilizer run-off, nor does 
it deal with the economic consequences on the cost of food 
that result from the shift to corn production instead of 
other foodstuffs.  These side effects alone are enough to 
give me pause.

To them, we can add the increased tendency toward corrosion 
an chemical breakdown in storage tanks, the damage to other 
fuel containers and transport systems, and the generally 
questionable government interference in a free market via 
subsidies to large agribusiness.

If we really have to go with ethanol as a fuel, we can make 
it from sawgrass, wood pulp leftovers from papermaking, 
and Maine's own potatoes, all of which have a lesser 
economic and ecologic footprint.

I'm not up on biodiesel, but I have a suspicion that it 
also has large unintended consequences.

/Robert

Brad Haslett wrote:
> 
> Imagine that, intelligent people have differing opinions on political
> issues!  Here is an issue that all the candidates for President agree on (or
> at least mouth support) - King Corn.  I'm writing a letter to Fred08 today
> asking him to come clean on the issue before the Iowa caucus. He won't,
> neither will anyone else. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.
> Every pol from every party romances this mistress.  This article is one of
> the better ones on the subject.  Brad