George Bush, Meet Michael Pollan
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01.23.07
According to the New York Times, "In his State of the Union address, President Bush is expected to call for a huge increase in the amount of ethanol that refiners mix with gasoline, probably double the current goal of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012." The Times goes on to say "Corn-based ethanol can only marginally reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. But it does little, if anything, to improve energy efficiency, and the mounting concern of some politicians is that relying on corn is leading to collateral damage in other parts of the agricultural economy and threatening the nation’s status as the leading corn exporter. The big increase in the works may mean consumers would end up paying more at the supermarket." In our review of the Omnivore's Dilemma, we said "If you eat industrially, you are made of corn. It holds together your McNuggets, it sweetens your soda pop, it fattens your meat, it is everywhere." In Mexico they are rioting over the price of tortillas. What will happen here when citizens start complaining about the price of their basic foods, all made from corn? ::New York Times
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Why is the white house always out of touch? They're like a grandparents stereotype. Ethanol came and went as a possible and worthwhile solution and Bush is just now being told to say the word ethanol? Would it kill someone at the white house to spend an hour online reading up on a topic before they direct the entire nation?
"In our review of the Omnivore's Dilemma, we said..."
just to clarify, michael pollan said that and treehugger quoted him.
LA: Without re-reading the book, (and being unable to find it) I could not be sure if when I wrote the review I was quoting him or paraphrasing him and took the safe and certain route. He is a better writer than I am and would not want to ascribe things to him that I might have written for the review.
Why is the white house always out of touch?
Strange, I was just thinking it, when some guy on the News said it: "George Bush will go down as the worst President in history." Touchee. That's 43rd out of 43. Worse than Nixon or Carter. Everything he's done has turned out wrong.
At first I gave him credit, not for being a genius, but at least smarter than he looks. I was wrong.
Sigh... seven lost years...
So how did a call for the production of more ethanol implied only the use of corn? The President's speech mentioned corn, yes, but mentioned agricultural waste, grasses, etc. Is there any real point to this treehugger post?
I grant that ethanol isn't a full bodied solution, I personally think it is more of a scam. However I can see ethanol as one of the keys to moving away from oil. The president also called for technology advancements in batteries for plug-in and hybrid vehicles.
He also mentioned "clean coal." Umm, no, it isn't renewable or sustainable, so regardless of the cleanliness we should look elsewhere for our energy.
Corn is an inefficient form of fuel for one basic reason. Michael Pollan even neglects to make the correlation in his book.
Our nation's industrial corn is grown with the heavy use of petro-chemical (ie. oil) fertilizers. So, in effect, we are taking oil, planting it in the ground to grow corn and then converting the corn back into oil. At the end of the day, if you are going to use oil, it would be better to just burn the oil and leave the corn alone.