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Turning Soybeans Into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Us Billions (npr.org)
This year, trucks and other heavy-duty motors in America will burn some 3 billion gallons of diesel fuel that was made from soybean oil. They're doing it, though, not because it's cheaper or better, but because they're required to, by law. From a report: The law is the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. For some, especially Midwestern farmers, it's the key to creating clean energy from American soil and sun. For others -- like many economists -- it's a wasteful misuse of resources. And the most wasteful part of the RFS, according to some, is biodiesel. It's different from ethanol, a fuel that's made from corn and mixed into gasoline, also as required by the RFS. In fact, gasoline companies probably would use ethanol even if there were no law requiring it, because ethanol is a useful fuel additive -- at least up to a point. That's not true of biodiesel. "This is an easy one, economically. Biodiesel is very expensive, relative to petroleum diesel," says Scott Irwin, an economist at the University of Illinois, who follows biofuel markets closely. He calculates that the extra cost for biodiesel comes to about $1.80 per gallon right now, meaning that the biofuel law is costing Americans about $5.4 billion a year.
Way too many of you don't actually need to be driving every day but still are. I realize that's immaterial to food/resources shipping, but it's still the bulk of the weight of emissions and fuel waste. What we're looking at here isn't the real problem. The real problem is wasteful employers demanding their wage slaves jump through these unnecessary extra hoops just out of some blind devotion to an obsolete tradition, or else some sick psychotic enjoyment of the sense of control it provides them to be able to order them to do in some cases even hours of unpaid work before and after each shift.
The whining about subsidies and externalities is one of the best example of our tribalism. Both sides while about the other side's subsidies and ignore their own.
so are you building the extra refinery? or am i? or you know if you don't i won't and we can both just charge x2 the price...
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Multinational companies killed the free market ages ago
Stuff made from plants is renewable.
On the other hand stuff made from plants is, well... made from plants.
And there are only so many that you can grow at the same time.
If you produce bio-fuels by finding a new use for waste (e.g.: fermenting *plants waste* into ethanol, as done is some countries), then that's not a problem. In fact it's an advantage, now you can get even more value from the plants that you grow.
If you produce bio-fuels by growing specific plants for that (e.g: I might remember that in the US you tend to do that ?), then your fuel production if going to compete with your food production.
Will you plant crops that you will use to sell food ? Will you plant crops that you will use to produce fuel ?
Bio fuel production in the latter case can have a bad impact on food production, even more so if the bio-fuels are exported for a premium to much richer countries, whereas the already starving population can barely buy enough to feed themselves : the local population won't be able to afford food a higher price to increase the incentive to produce more food, while the other richer countries will be able to pay slightly more money to make sure they'll receive the fuel they crave.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How is it with a multi-hundred-billion-dollar deficit, people always look at something that costs $6Bn or even like $0.040Bn and say, "Hey, if we got rid of that, that $600Bn deficit would go away!"?
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Look at all of the solar and wind companies that have bankrupted even with subsidies.
Look at all the coal, oil and nuclear companies that have bankrupted even with subsidies. Your point is?
Ezekiel 23:20
Is that why we wasted 20 billion on two nuclear plants
No, much of that $20 billion was wasted on fighting anti-nuke protesters, eco-nutter lawsuits, over-regulation, NIMBYism, fossil-fuel lobbyists and their pet politicos, and general irrational fears that the anti-nuke people have incubated for decades using mis- and dis-information and outright lies.
There are many forces, both domestic and foreign, who do not want the US to have cheap, safe, and reliable nuclear power, and who have been working for decades to make nuclear power plants as expensive and difficult as possible to build and maintain.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Yeah, because nobody has solved the problem of companies taking the profits from nuclear and running while spreading its risks over the whole of society.
Solve this, and I'll be pro-nuclear the next second.