In any debate, information is the greatest asset a person can possess. You can use facts to beat an opponent over the head until they turn blue. In the case of ethanol, there is enough data to make a well-informed decision without being in the pocket of either the corn lobby or the petroleum industry.

As I noted before, the blending of ethanol reduces the energy content of your gasoline. What I failed to add was that in 1986, the Department of Agriculture calculated the energy released by gasohol to be roughly two-thirds of normal gasoline. Extrapolating that fact, they estimated a 3.3 percent reduction in fuel economy (USDA report 562, 1986).

After that report, the Department of Energy studied vehicle fleets using ethanol blends and found a 4.7 percent greater decrease in fuel economy. This means that you get less miles per gallon and fill up more often. That translates to less money in your pocket.

However, that amount pales in comparison to the other ways the ethanol lobby hurts the consumer. Currently, ethanol blended fuel is subsidized when paying federal fuel excise taxes.

The tax per gallon is 5.4 cents. Even if you thumb your nose at the government for avoiding the tax, remember that the tax break is made up by you and me. So you pay indirectly anyway.

That subsidy for the ethanol industry is but one in a long list. In 1977, President Carter forced a bill down the throats of Congress that amounted in a $60 million subsidy for ethanol production facilities.

During the 1980 election campaign, he promised $341 million, much of which was disbursed immediately to secure votes.

In 1990, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas pushed through even more subsidies for the ethanol industry with the Clean Air Act, and currently that industry receives $770 million (Congressional Budget Office). By 2000, it is projected to exceed one billion dollars. Remember whose money that is.

The issue of economic feasibility is one which ethanol cannot escape given the subsidies it receives. In a recent policy analysis for the Cato Institute, James Bovard concluded that without the tax subsidy the ethanol industry would disappear overnight. Aside from the fuel excise tax break and the plant operations subsidy, there are more economic reasons to avoid ethanol.

In 1986, the Department of Agriculture studied the issue and found that the cost to produce a gallon of ethanol was $18.80 a barrel. At the time of the study, the price for oil was $16 a barrel. When converted to gasoline, a wholesale price comparison found regular gasoline to cost 60 cents a gallon. Gasohol cost a full dollar more per gallon.

Not only were consumers paying more for fuel, but that was on top of the subsidies they had already forked over.

Even if you wanted to argue the age of the study, who will honestly tell me the cost of production is cheaper for either product? And despite the current rise in gas prices, I know everyone remembers earlier this year when a gallon of regular unleaded cost a buck.

Even if ethanol was cheaper to produce, you have to realize that the energy released by a gallon of ethanol is 76,000 BTUs. To produce that gallon you need to expend 85,000-91,000 BTUs during production. This includes the processing plants powered by coal to tractors running on gasoline, both of which contribute to more pollution (USDA 1991).

So, there is one hole in the environmentally green theory, but there are some more. The California Air Resources Board, which is charged with cleaning up the environment, studied ethanol and found that it reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 25 percent.

What they also found was that it increased hydrocarbon emissions by 50 percent and nitrogen oxide emissions by 15 percent (CARB 1990).

Recently, research by Jeffrey Gaffney and Nancy Marley at Argonne National Laboratory bolstered the hydrocarbon claim (EST 1997).

The whole environmentally green claim seems like a lot of hoopla that ignores the sad truth that we are exchanging one form of pollution for another. Let us not disregard the fact that the rapid evaporation of hydrocarbons has also been linked to the greenhouse effect. In fact, in 1994 the Department of Energy concluded that there were no environmental benefits to ethanol (States News Service, May 13, 1994).

The idea of ethanol was not concocted overnight, and a lot of research has gone into it.

Though you may think the USDA would be in favor of ethanol since it is a corn product, the fact is they conducted their own research and found that it was detrimental in every way.

In 1986, they concluded that federally mandated ethanol-induced demand for corn would drive up the price of corn 2-4 cents per bushel, and this would cause a drop in the price of soybeans of about 4-6 cents. When brought to market, the drop in soybean prices would be about three times that amount (USDA 1986).

The added cost of corn at that early stage in production would ripple through the economy, starting with the cost of food production.

From the second that corn was sold at a higher price, to when a farmer paid more to feed his livestock, to the time you sat down to supper, the cost to the American people would be $8.6 billion dollars (USDA 1986).

That was a decade ago, and we have seen a jump in food prices while many farmers go under. Subsidies have increased, and the end is not in sight. The truth is, we’ve been had. Get the facts.

---

Aaron Woell is a senior in political science from Bolingbrook, Ill. He apologizes to the small farmers who didn’t know any better.