Remember How Ethanol Fuels Were Going to Save the Day?

Well, biofuels generally. Yeah, not so much. Ethanol Is Worse for Climate Than Gasoline, Study Finds

It is funny to see this story on a site called Treehugger.

Ethanol was supposed fulfill the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and make everything better. It wasn't supposed to be derived from corn. Things didn't turn out the way we were told they would.

The researchers found RFS increased corn prices by 30%, expanded corn cultivation by 8.7%, increased fertilizer use by 3 to 8%, degraded the water supply with chemical runoff, and "caused enough domestic land use change emissions such that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher."

If you click the link above, there is a cartoon which shows the ethanol being sent to gas pump via a pipeline. But that was one of the problems early on, that ethanol must be trucked - adding to the cost of its use.

So why do we still use it, if it is so bad for the environment? Money. Agribusiness makes tons of money off ethanol.

And then there is the issue that even before the recent wave of inflation, people in a lot of the world were going hungry.

Treehugger has long complained about feeding corn to cars instead of people, and in a time when food prices are rising fast, it seems particularly silly.

I got directed to Treehugger because of a "discussion" happening in the comments section related to one article. And while I miss the days of the old bulletin board flame-wars as much as anyone, I did not participate. (It wasn't really a flame war, with only a handful of personal insults being thrown around.) Anyway, I don't know if I will be visiting that site on a regular basis, because it is mostly annoying as hell.