Environmentalists Need to Help Fight Bush’s Ethanol Surge

Corn-based ethanol has been at the center of a well-funded misinformation campaign launched and perpetuated by the Bush Administration. In fact Nicholas Hollis, President of the Agribusiness Council, believes that “ethanol is the largest scam in our nation’s history”.

The facts about corn-based ethanol are seriously under-reported by the media. The ethanol gold rush is gaining momentum and its time to look at the serious problems it’s creating. The environmental community needs to be a strong voice of opposition against Bush’s ethanol surge and the corn subsidies that our corn state politicians are only too eager to re-new in Farm Bill 2007.
Most environmentalists are well aware of the damage oil and natural gas drilling does to our fragile ecosystems. Unfortunately, what they haven’t woken up to yet is that ethanol production is highly dependent on natural gas for fertilizers and power generation for the refineries. However, we are now facing a natural gas crisis and drilling is increasing in environmentally sensitive regions in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

Energy Bulletin