World-News

Boston Globe
by Jeff Jacoby

03/09/08

What do ethanol and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? Each is a good reminder of that most powerful of unwritten decrees, the Law of Unintended Consequences — and of the all-too-frequent tendency of solutions imposed by the state to exacerbate the harms they were meant to solve. Take ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel made (primarily) from corn. Ethanol has been touted as a weapon in the fashionable crusade against climate change, because when mixed with gasoline, it modestly reduces emissions of carbon dioxide. … But now comes word that expanding ethanol use is likely to mean not less CO2 in the atmosphere, but more. Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline by 20 percent … ethanol use will cause such emissions to nearly double over the next 30 years...

http://tinyurl.com/36r8kn


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

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Corn-Based Ethanol Could Worsen 'Dead Zone'
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/11/7620/



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