Affirmative Action for the Green Industry? Part 1

Affirmative Action for the Green Industry? Part 1
Al Ritter

As Affirmative Action is used to promote one race over another, the Green Industry has an ally in the fight for your energy dollars. That ally is called government subsidies. Governmental subsidies can come in the form of many different incentives but the result is the same, to give taxpayer dollars to favor one industry over another.

The government tells us that we need to rid ourselves of foreign oil dependence when they really want us to rid ourselves cold turkey from “dirty fossil fuels” entirely. They have this hidden agenda and their actions speak louder than words for those who chose to hear. They claim that foreign oil is the enemy, but yet they refuse to let us drill even in our own country. They defy court orders that tell them they are in contempt of court; they decimate an entire labor industry to promote their agenda. They want to destroy the oil and coal industry and yet promote industries that are only marginally effective.

Subsidies can come in the forms of research and development grants, tax loopholes, bond incentives, bottom line tax benefits or other various advantageous programs. The government wants us to believe they can spot trends and fund them before America can actually seek them out. What becomes a dangerous precedent is when the government actually makes their own trends and proceeds to fund them with no demand from the public.

Follow with me here a minute. In an effort to rid ourselves of foreign oil President Bush started the initiative to use ethanol in our gasoline in the amount of a maximum of 85%. Sounds like a great idea right? Let’s look at the draw backs. The product used to create the ethanol is corn, even though corn yields the least amount of usable ethanol per acre, and corn has to be replanted yearly. I suppose Bush saw this as a way to increase the price of corn for American farmers, but the idea is both a waste of food stocks and an abuse of farm subsidies. Yes, citizens we are paying American farmers to grow corn.

Saw grass produces 10 times the amount of ethanol than corn does and yet doesn’t require annual planting, so why are we using corn? It’s simple economics spawned from government, it favors one group over another. Environmentalists claim that ethanol burns cleaner, and that is true if you compare one gallon of ethanol to one gallon of gasoline, but things aren’t that simple. It takes 2 gallons of ethanol create the same energy of 1 gallon of gasoline, so the government is hiding that little fact from you as you create an opinion of its use. This is simply proven as you do a practical test of E85 ethanol fuel and you notice that your fuel mileage has dropped about 12 to 15%. If ethanol actually grew in liquid form somehow magically its use could be judged on that alone but it doesn’t, ethanol has to be made and the harvesting, fermentation, and transportation required to manufacture it creates 3 times the pollution the actual burning of the ethanol.

Another question the government won’t answer for you is this…….if ethanol is so wonderful why don’t we use 100% ethanol rather than gasoline? The answer is rather complex and encompasses several problems. 100% ethanol is extremely corrosive and destructive to metal and rubber parts. Because of ethanol’s inefficiency a car using
100% ethanol will use exactly twice as much fuel. Ethanol will actually attract moisture (water) in an open container within minutes. A 100% ethanol mixture will have severe drivability problems in cold weather.

Now that you have the full picture of the use of ethanol you can make an INFORMED decision on the supposedly rational use of it in our national energy supply, or better still ………..the subsidies of 45 cents per gallon in federal money needed to make it look as though it’s a viable alternative to gasoline. Especially when 13.2 billion gallons were distilled in 2010 for use in fuel………you do the math.

Part 2 on Friday