And giving mills that are producing ethanol leave and let to double their pollution output is a very, very bad idea.
Every acre of corn given over to ethanol production is an acre of corn that is not going to be eaten. This will either result in food shortages or in increased acreage. Increasing the acreage under cultivation will mean that either marginal land will be cultivated (a very bad idea. See: Dust Bowl) or new forestland will be cleared (also a very bad idea. See: carbon sequestration in forests). But politicos see promoting ethanol production as "good fer the farmers," of which there are none -- there are only farm factories with laborers. And they also get to tell their "constiency" that they're working on the security of the US by getting us off the oil tit.
What they fail to grasp -- and I really do think it's a failure of imagination and wit, not mendacity -- is that they are encouraging the degradation of the environment in ways from which we cannot recover for years and years.
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