Obama's Ethanol Support Shared By Many Advisers

When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry's most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for instance, came to help cut the ribbon -- and so did Senator Barack Obama.

Then running far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls, Mr. Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would eventually register his first caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the country's second largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement of ethanol as an alternative fuel.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[LCRover001]

I really don't understand how hard this is for some of you to understand. Oil is not going to last for ever there is only so much of it. It is used to make far more things than gas and diesel. All plastics come from oil. Using oil for fuel is a waste that will leave us not only with out a fuel supply when it is gone but with out means to make plastics. Look around everything has plastic in it now.

If we can change over our vehicles and other transportation to alternatives. Then what oil we have should last quit a while longer than the current rate we are burning it up.

Imagine how much pollution would be done away with, with clean fuels. Now think about it for a second and roll this around in your head. If we cut down enough on pollution caused by transportation coal could be used to create energy.

The U.S. has more coal than we know what to do with. If transportation were to switch to a clean fuel source then coal power plants would be able to come online and the combined environmental impact of the two would more than likely be less than what just the vehicles on the roads today produce.

The way out of this is planning and thinking not reacting and continuing to do the same things over and over again. Oil needs to be removed from the equation when it comes to energy.

[darthdarcy]

Hemp creates 10 tons of bio mass per acre..more than any other plant on Earth, and it renews itself every 4 months..!

If we planted Hemp on only 6% of our land mass the Hemp that would produce could run our entire nation cars trucks electric power and heat all our homes just 6% of our land mass..

As far as bio fuel Hemp cannot be beat...it's better than corn or sugar cane anything..any other plant..

[1Eco]

The current BioMass Crop yield objective is 20 tons per acre per year, which converts to 2000 gals per acre.

100 gals per ton.

[jackpinesavage]

Has anyone actually made bio-fuel from hemp? The operative need in a bio-fuel crop is sugar...which is one reason (along with no-till planting) that cane beats corn.

I'm not saying that hemp isn't a valuable crop. We should be planting it and using it. But i'm not so sure about the bio-fuel argument. Do you have any evidence? And since there are a great many things you can do with the plant, we might well be better served by using it to replace petroleum as an industrial building block rather than using it as a fuel.

[LCRover001]

Actually you can make bio fuel out of lawn clippings, all ethanol is, is moonshine or for you city folks 100 proof alcohol.

Any plant material can be used to make alcohol. Sugar is an ingredient but not necessarily needed. There is an old heirloom corn that moonshiners used back in the day that doesn't need sugar added; they used it because the revenuers looked for large purchases of sugar to catch moonshiners. There is a company in Tennessee that is using Kudzu to produce ethanol. So any plant material can be used to produce fuel, if we aren"t going to drink it who cares what it is made from.

Imagine if our government was really serious about this. How many tons of lawn clippings are put into land fields every year? How many tons of garbage from grocery stores and restaurants are sent to land fields a year in this country? The current administration is setting up the bio-fuel idea to fail. Maybe when Obama is elected he will do what is needed to start this country on the path to oil independent fuel.

[nanoscare]

I think the benefit of hemp is that genetically it is very versatile. It could probably be bred to produce more oil than corn or cellulose for some future ethanol production facility. Sugar uses a lot of water and nutrients whereas hemp can grow in more areas under poorer conditions. Corn ethanol is bad, sugar cane is better but we should really give hemp a try too. Of course having all that pollen floating around the globe hitting weed bred to for something else won't do stoners any good. In fact, stop the introduction of hemp immediately!

[brighterside]

I'm not a supporter of ethanol and I believe that its the least attractive alternative energy out there. However, I do want to state that ethanol causes food shortages is a myth.

We grow corn in the United States not to feed the hungry in other nations. But we grow it for our own personal consumption and use it to feed cattle. The world main staple is rice not corn. More than 70% of the world eat rice. Also, corn grows abundantly in just about anywhere in the world. Most governments and localized areas can easily grow corn for food consumption.

America waste more food than any other nation in the world. We also consume more resources than any other nation. The problem is not that Americans want to help countries that are in need of food. But the problem is one of distribution -- in which we can't get food into the hands of starving people.

Secondly, farmers grow corn for cattle feed and for other uses such as cooking oil. Its not grown for food consumption towards these poor nations that need food. If so, why does people say that ethanol causes a food shortage?

I also like to state that most countries that grow ethanol use sugarcane instead. Sugarcane is not part of the food chain and thus cannot be linked to other nations food shortage.

[jackpinesavage]

True, but ethanol farming does affect the agricultural commodity markets. Some current shortages of other cereal grain crops are related to farmers planting corn over other crops because with subsidies for ethanol, the corn is much bigger moneymaker.

That's fine. The farmers have that right. However, the people who really make the big money are the ones at ADM, Monsanto, et al. And they are the biggest backers of ethanol.

Furthermore, corn is the feedstock for industrial food magic. And while most of the world relies on rice for its cereal grain consumption, all the packaged food sold round the world is corn based.

[LCRover001]

Um you might want think about one major thing here. Why are farmers still being paid not to grow?

On top of that why are the provisions for growing being setup so that only large corporate frams can meet those provisions?

The answer: the program is set up to fail and when it does those that did so can say see we told you tree huggers this wouldn't work.

The way out of this fuel crisis is to use every means necessary. Every farmer no mater how small should be encouraged to participate. Every farmer should be planting and growing not being paid not to.

The time for inaction is over. If this country continues to sit on its hands and hope some magic fix or some grand oil find is going to fix things then it will be way to late to do anything when gas is at 10 bucks a gallon. It is going to take time we can not just switch over night to another fuel source. The time for action is now.

[research]

Rooftop solar and electric cars.

Offshore and rural wind power too.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/users/profile/research

Reserve farm land for food.

[Redrover666]

How has that been working out for you? Did you hire a contractor or did you install the rooftop panels yourself? Are you generating enough energy to provide for your needs and able to sell back to the grid?

[research]

Hows that oil well your drilling in your back yard? Got a permit for the nuke plant? How's the coal burning going.

[darthdarcy]

Here it is again Hemphasis first time was bad link..

http://www.hemphasis.net/Fuel-Energy/fuel.html

Very scientific and factual...

[darthdarcy]

Hemp is the number one bio-mass plant on Earth..

Forget corn it's already a disaster..for the poor around the world and Americans as we've seen already..

Hemp is the way to go...

http://www.hemphasis.net/fuel-energy/fuel.html

http://www.hempevolution.org/energy/energy.htm

[RememberTheAlamo]

Hi All,

Looks like a "look at me" argument . . . McCain is sucking up the spotlight with the energy talk.

Ethanol is "yesterday's news" . . . relatively a snoozer on the energy front . . . and real difficult to explain/argue with the normal American . . . We understand nuclear, drilling, coal, electric and those cute little solar lights at Home Depot.

When it comes to ethanol conversation, it is a nuanced discussion, considering the subsidies, farmers, CO2 absorption, security, net energy talk and all the niche players.

What isn't missed on Americans, is the substantial wealth transfer occurring as a result of pursuing ethanol. Wealth is moving from blue urban centers to the red rural areas at a spectacular high speed.

We can get 150-200 bushels per acre, at $6 per bushel . . . and for a 640 acre farm it transfers over 1/2 million dollars from urban 'users" to the rural farmers. . . . each year! . . . . multiply that by thousands of farms and millions of acres . . . Talk about taxing the urban dwellers!

Couldn't imagine a more enjoyable paradox than the urban political choice creating a financial windfall for all those 'red county" farmers . . . . It may be too soon . . . but we need to say THANK YOU!

[Trinidad707]

The same people that run trhe oil companies are in on the ethanol thing as well. When we all convert over it will be exxon ,mobil and all the rest that will be still in charge..

[init]

Just look at it this way: The brother did not get there by his looks. Lets move on to much more important issues, please. Norman Mailer: " Boredom is the underlying illness of the twentieth century; boredom slays more of existence than war." Change please!

[rtnd22]

What dosent the NY Times write about the link between McCain adviser Phil Gram Enron...and HIGH GAS PRICES....

[orangepetal]

Wind / Solar / Drill / Nuclear. We need to face our energy resources asap. We can no longer have the luxury of debating and experimenting. Global resources are a serious issue, people, especially poor people are suffering. Break the ideological gridlock in Washington. We now really need a leader that can effectively barter on behalf of the interests of the American people.

[mergina]

Could you please stop starving the world so some a-hole in a hummer does not have to pay as much at the pump?

[themodernleader]

I have a conflicting interest. I benefit from the price of corn. However, the cockeyed Federal policy of subsidizing etnanol which costs around .75 hundreds of the dollar it returns to produce is another example of our dysfunctional, squandering economic system.
The farmers I talk to are emotionally drawn to the ethanol program, obviously for their own monetary security. Any politican not wholehearted supporting ethanol production will lose a helluva lot of votes.
If Obama comes out to support a number of other outrageous economic panaceas, he will be a shoo in come November.

[pearbrandy]

Hey 'Brighterside' -

Read this for just a small sample of the disaster that ethanol and other biofuels are creating worldwide:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/24/biofuels.wildlife

I wonder which side half-Kenyan Obama will come down.

[brighterside]

Yes your right. I was never a fan of Ethanol. But its a better alternative than oil. But if societies are changed for the worst because of it I don't think its a good idea.

I've mentioned before, there is so many better and promising alternative energy than ethanol. We should really put our money into those programs rather than ethanol.

[sassafra]

ethanol is a supremely stupid alternative fuel. it's hard to transport, corrodes engine materials at an accelerated rate, inflates our corn prices, and really doesn't net us much extra energy after the petroleum energy costs to produce the ethanol are factored in. as proof it's a bad idea, our idiot president has been pushing it also, doesn't that say it all?
we should institute a crash program to bring to market commercial petroleum fuel cells which would increase the efficiency of use of our existing oil reserves to the point we could very well be off foreign oil altogether.