Pollywogs!

CBS News Reports

My favorite quotes:

"I think what we like about ethanol, in this case is that there are things that we can really do right now. It doesn't require massive technology breakthroughs, and it does legitimately reduce the amount of oil the country has to import," says Wagoner. 

 

Meints thinks some people may have thought the plan to get into ethanol production was crazy, and he admits that not all of his friends and neighbors invested in the project. But he says that was their loss. "I think most of 'em that didn't [invest] now wish they would have," he says.

That’s because business is very good. The plant opened just a year ago and quickly hit maximum capacity.

Larry Hansen, a member of the plant's board of directors, says the biggest impact on the community has been that the price of corn in the area rose from five to 10 cents a bushel.

"If you've got eight million bushels coming in, all that extra money that was being sent down the river is now here in the community," says Seward, who is also on the board. 

 

Then, under high temperatures, the mixture is distilled in a giant version of an old-fashioned corn-liquor still. What emerges at the end is ethanol, which is nearly pure alcohol. Trucks carry it to a nearby railroad line…"Ethanol has been one of the best-kept secrets that is out there. We know it’s a good product. We know it's good for the economy. We know it’s good for the environment," says Granzow.

And more and more people are seeing it that way. To meet rising demand, the plant will expand to double its capacity by next year. But the farmers who run the place are already thinking beyond that: to a new process of making ethanol from cellulose, instead of corn. This would be much cheaper, because cellulose is found in everything from prairie grass to agricultural waste to wood chips.

 

…and the winner is…

 

Oil industry executives, taking heat from Congress over their multi-billion-dollar record profits, favor a different approach. They want to spend billions find to new sources of oil, which is more expensive to produce, instead of switching over to E85. 

 

The moral of the story?  If Exxon dumped billions into Ethanol infrastructure today instead of giving it away to some fat-cat CEO, global tensions (read: why are we interested in Iran/Iraq?) would go down as oil demand went down, the environment would benefit from the cleaner burning fuel and hundreds of communities would have a solid, clean industry which provided money back into the locals instead of pumping it out to the aforementioned fat cat.  But, no, its a much better to give it away as a bonus to some rich fuck who is going to have a real hard time affording retirement…

Viva la Revolucion!