Green at all costs

How The Ethanol Mandate Is Killing The American Prairie

http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/how-the-ethanol-mandate-is-killing-the-american-prairie/

Excerpt: America's long war on fossil fuels is destroying the famed American prairie. According to a report by the Organic Consumers Association, 95% of the 240 million acres of prairie land that once blanketed the middle of our country, from Texas to North Dakota, already is gone. Only isolated pockets of prairie tall grass, some 35 million acres set aside for soil and wildlife conservation, remain. And that — largely in the Great Plains — is at risk of being destroyed. Among the factors most responsible for this tragic loss of our prairie heritage is the federal renewable fuel standard, a congressional mandate requiring refiners to mix renewable fuel (mostly corn-based ethanol) with U.S. gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and heating oil products. (By now anyone that doesn't know it takes more energy to grow and convert corn to ethanol than we get back from the ethanol has not been paying any attention. It is utterly ridiculous to use corn as a source of liquid fuel energy; works great if you have sugar cane, as they do in Brazil, but we can't grow that in US farmland, we're too far north for the plant to thrive. But the huge profits that big Agro has been making on corn, and the very generous donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle, just keep this really bad idea going. It costs every taxpayer money, makes food more expensive, and is not doing the ecology any good at all, quite the contrary. Time for some truly courageous congresspeople to stand up and start the fight to phase this out. Do we have any of those --Del)