We should increase our development of alternative fuels, taking advantage of renewable resources, like using corn and sugar to produce ethanol or soybeans to produce biodiesel.
Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 - twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners.
Ethanol is, in its pure form, just as much of a sham as oil.
By increasing the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol and bio-diesel, and providing the Department of Energy with a budget to create more energy efficiency options, agriculture can be the backbone of our energy supply as well.
I don't care whether you use natural gas, ethanol, the battery. You can use anything, just so it's American.
Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
Ethanol's not an ideal fuel.
Political pandering comes in all shapes and sizes, but every four years the presidential primary bring us in contact with its purest form - praising ethanol subsidies amid the corn fields of Iowa.
Renewable ethanol represents a clear opportunity to grow a significant portion of our own fuel locally and begin to break the hold imported fuels have on us.
By furthering the use of ethanol, farmers are presented with the opportunity to produce a cash crop by collecting their agricultural wastes.