Corn is the milstone around America's neck. It is heavily subsidized and put into too many food products. It one of the prime reasons this country ihas so many obese people - corn sweetners must be converted into fat before the body can burn them unlike REAL sugar.

Ethanol from corn is good for ADM. You can make it with any agricultural waste cellulose. Using corn is a scam for the benefit of an already heavily subsidized and privilieged industry. There are many crops other than corn that can produce cellulose and oils. A quarter century ago the only people talking about this in this country were the people trying to get hemp legalized to do the same thing.

Biodiesel is not the answer unless, as in Taiwan, we are required to recycle cooking oil, and even then it would benefit only the relative handful of diesel powered autos in the U.S. and, perhaps, commercial trucks.

Ethanol is the post-industrial age equivalent of snake oil. It's really worth nothing (except to the criminally subsidized agri-business giants) unable to cure our energy woes.

The third way is, of course, the hard way. We regulate the auto industry so that you'd never again see Becky-Jo driving a Ford F-350 (with obligatory NASCAR number on the rear window) to Wal-Mart or some freshly-minted professional athlete multi-millionaire, with posse in tow, cruising to Fat Burger in his "pimped" Escalade. The Govenator would be paying several thousand dollars a year in gross weight and engine displacement tax for each of his "Hummers," with the proceeds going to pay for mass transit.

Americans have proven to be incredibly selfish, shortsighted and, frankly, none to bright. Since we can't make the right decisions about our energy use, they will need to be forced upon them. But, of course, this will never happen.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Indigenous-Rights.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

To make it a weepy liberal indigenous people's issue. Ethanol is bad for half naked cannibals. Boo hoo.

American "agri-business" these days is a very different kind of set-up from where it was in ...oh say...1950. Having grown up in the American mid-west on a small dairy farm I can attest to this. The typical American farmer of the early post WW2 years was considerably less reliant on the high chemical inputs,high energy inputs and high usage patterns of high horsepowered machines that are now standard practice.It is certain that there are some deeply vested interests in the USA who are all in favor of higher corn prices and soybean prices due to bio-fuels demand increases. John Deere,Caterpillar,Case-IH and Agco all are very happy to sell more big horsepowered farm equipment in the USA and abroad. As are the heavy haul truck makers. The big machinery and truck makers,dealers and associated support service industries benefit very much from more production,more money being pumped into North and South American agri-biofuels production. The financial services this all requires is a big money making biz in and of itself.

The threat to remaining rainforests is from how easy all this high powered machinery makes bulldozing new roads into previously untouched,pristine virginal rainforest for logging and clear-cut purposes. Then the big horsepowered machines get put into play converting these newly deforested areas into big monocultured plantations for "positive economic payout" from palm oil,rubber,cellulose,soybeans and corn. Naturally once this pattern is proven and known to be a money maker for loggers,ranchers,farmers, machinery makers/sellers,seed and agri-chem interests and finance providers the push is on to increase profits and support more of the same. It builds on itself with high repeat cycles.

Big,high powered machines use lots of energy. Trucking logs or farm commodities across tough or large distances takes lots of energy.When the "fast buzz money" of farming to create bio-fuel supply chains is pushed by governments,big agri-biz,big petro-biz and the commodity/stock markets it is certain regional ecologies and what remains of the untouched,natural world of rivers and rainforest,wild plants and wild life will be under larger and deeper attacks more often.

Logging of untouched rainforests is now in full swing in Asia,Africa and Amazonia. Once the crude and destructive roads go into untouched rainforests then encroachment,despoilment and exploitation are sure to follow. The economics of this being ruthless and often also illegal. The disregard for the natural world and these irreplaceable rainforests for some quick,one time payouts is venal and incredibly shortsighted. It is certain that how the planet has faired since the end of WW2 from the increased use and implementation of high powered machinery is a legacy of short term economic payout thinking leading to greater exploitation and terrible ecological/environmental outcomes. Understanding how the scale of machines has increased in horsepower,capacity and ease of operation opens to how the planet is now being put to the lash of economic gain more than in anytime since man first cut down trees,farmed the cleared land or set about altering the natural world to suit pursuits of mining,water-control and redirection or transportation. The American mid-west and the rainforests of Asia,Africa and Amazonia are indeed all part of this story.

Bio-fuel promotion and usage opens to some tough trade-offs regarding global food supplies,how the rainforests are protected or not and how human intrusion into remaining natural,untouched lands and waterways is governed/regulated. Any and all outcomes then becoming/growing more perilous and indeed ominous due to human ignorance,indifference and unfettered avarice. Wrong and stupid choices are indeed wrong and stupid anymore when better knowledge and better choices are readily available and open for selection.