To get the low-down on whether biofuel is a good idea, I thought I'd turn to my old friend Michael Pollan. After all, studying corn has been his Thing for a couple books now. I easily found a NYT article on the subject. He basically points out that making biofuel from corn requires a lot of fuel to begin with (both to grow corn, and then to process it).
"So why the stampede to make ethanol from corn? Because we have so much of it, and such a powerful lobby promoting its consumption. Ethanol is just the latest chapter in a long, sorry history of clever and profitable schemes to dispose of surplus corn: there was corn liquor in the 19th century; feedlot meat starting in the 1950’s and, since 1980, high fructose corn syrup. We grow more than 10 billion bushels of corn a year in this country, far more than we can possibly eat — though God knows we’re doing our best, bingeing on corn-based fast food and high fructose corn syrup till we’re fat and diabetic. We probably can’t eat much more of the stuff without exploding, so the corn lobby is targeting the next unsuspecting beast that might help chomp through the surplus: your car."
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My future husband, a scientist and biofuel expert, says corn fuel is a joke. Works fine if you want to go 15 mph.
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