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Strange Bedfellows Fight Ethanol Subsidies
Reader Actual Reality sends us to Business Week for a tale of the strangest political coalition to be seen in a while — greens, hippies, libertarians, and livestock producers uniting to get ethanol subsidies reduced or killed. The demand for the alternative fuel is driving up corn prices and having big impacts on other parts of the economy. Not many other issues are capable of getting left-leaning economist Paul Krugman and the Cato Institute on the same side.
This was never about reducing oil dependence it was about subsidizing one of the most powerful lobbies the corn lobby. Corn alcohol requires large amounts of energy to produce so it actually increases the use of coal and oil. The current administration is also fanatical about hydrogen because most hydrogen is produced from fossil sources. Yes it can be produced by electrolysis from wind or solar but it won't be. It's like "clean coal". Yes coal can be burned more cleanly and the CO2 sequestered but there isn't a single clean coal plant in operation. There are better sources for alcohol but they lack powerful lobbies.
...just because it's alternative. Ethanol has the only advantages that it's not oil and that it's renewable. Environmentally and financially it's foolish, as a previous poster pointed out. But one shouldn't be all that surprised to find us Libertarians aligned with anybody. It's the Party of Principle for a reason: Libertarians do their best to stay out of partisan politics and make public policy about what's actually best (gasp!).
In this case, Libertarians are against any and all forms of government subsidies, and it's rather obvious why if we're absolutely pro-free market. Nobody should read this article and say, "Wow, that's surprising that they're working together!" Rather, they should read it and really wonder why these different groups oppose subsidies for ethanol and whether or not ethanol is a viable choice for an alternative fuel.
After all, alternative != better.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
While I occasionally enjoy Krugman's columns, it's only window dressing that Krugman and the Cato institute are on opposite sides. They really represent a duopoly of opinion that relies on "the other side" to give "their side" some sort of validity.
Periodic ideological alignment is necessary to demonstrate that both "sides" are willing to engage in creative problem solving and aren't just part of an ideological game.
If they ever dried up we could always go back to growing our own food.
What an idiotic thing to say.
I grew up on a farm. My dad used to joke that "city people" think that food magically appears in the grocery store. I never realized how close to the truth that statement might be until I read your post and saw that it was modded up as insightful.