A (very) Simple Case for Ethanol

Since the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, also known as VEETC or simply “ethanol subsidies” expired at the end of 2011, there has been a wide range of pieces making the same old anti-ethanol arguments: food vs fuel! greenhouse gasses! net energy! land use change! I don’t think there’s really much of anything to these arguments, but the reasons are technical and probably none of you are interested. (If you are, let me know in the comment section, and I can do some posts about them).

So instead, I’ll just make the simplest pro-ethanol argument I can. Its an argument that I find to be almost completely missing from the debate.

These guys defend corn fields in Iowa:

And these guys defend oil fields in the middle east:

So any time anyone tries to tell you that ethanol is “worse than gasoline”, remember the above images.

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