Boy, am I sick and tired of being lectured to about the environment.
It’s especially infuriating to hear sermons from folks who spend their weekends polluting the air driving up to their mountain condos and the ski slopes.
If all these conscientious citizens actually believed Al Gore’s Nostradamus shtick, trust me, they wouldn’t be snowboarding in Vail this weekend.
They wouldn’t be flying to romantic destinations abroad for vacations.
They wouldn’t even be drinking Starbucks coffee – produced from beans that are imported in boats and planes that destroy the atmosphere.
Can’t these people brew up some American coffee at home? For Mother Earth?
I say, if Albert Gore can fly to Davos, Switzerland, and lecture me about the evils of a relatively modest lifestyle from a hotel room that costs more than my fuel-efficient 1999 Honda CRV, I deserve a guilt-free cup of Guatemala Antigua (refined acidity, subtle cocoa texture!).
You do too.
The trouble is, while I can always ignore Gore – and I do an outstanding job of it – I can’t ignore government proposals that value idealistic talk over sound economic and environmental policy.
Case in point: Today, Gov. Bill Ritter and General Motors will announce a partnership that will “boost the use and awareness of ethanol-based E85 fuel,” according to the press release.
Why? E85 – an 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend – sounds like a positive idea. Until, that is, you realize experts are becoming increasingly skeptical that ethanol is the answer to our so-called oil-addiction problem.
In October, Consumer Reports reported that government “support for flexible-fuel vehicles, which can run on E85, is indirectly causing more gasoline consumption rather than less” (aggravated emphasis mine).
Worse, many critics also question whether ethanol is, in fact, any healthier for the environment than gas.
Last year the journal Science reported that numerous studies illustrated that corn ethanol technologies produced “greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline.”
Experts say that anywhere from 5 percent to 25 percent of ethanol is “renewable energy,” and the rest of ethanol’s energy – applied to produce corn and process the corn into ethanol – is derived from coal, natural gas and nuclear power.
So why would President Bush tout ethanol in his State of the Union speech? Why would Ritter be teaming up with GM to sell us on this alternative energy when many unanswered questions remain?
It’s about public policy that sounds good to the ear of the average American.
As for GM, it’s about the bottom line.
According to news reports, the struggling company plans to double production of
flexible-fuel vehicles to 2 million by 2010. Consumer Reports claims that “the FFV surge is being motivated by generous fuel-economy credits that auto-makers get for every FFV they build, even if it never runs on E85.”
So this is really good for General Motors – but not so much for Coloradans.
As more people are beginning to realize that ethanol is not the answer, you’ll soon be hearing a lot about the new miracle cure for oil consumption: cellulosic ethanol. This stuff is produced from corn stover, wood pulp and switch grass, among other things.
The environmental benefits of cellulosic ethanol are indeed better, though its economic feasibility is questionable.
The head of the Energy Information Administration, Guy Caruso, claimed late last year that cellulosic ethanol production costs were five times greater than corn ethanol’s – already at an artificially low price because of subsidies.
And for all the hand wringing about global warming, economic feasibility matters. It matters to you and to all those moralizing environmentalists who lecture you about your SUV before heading out to the slopes.
Links to further reading on ethanol
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday and Thursday. He can be reached at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
