Al Gore Change Stance on Ethanol Fuel

On this site I have been more than harsh about Al Gore.



Now, for this he gets two thumbs up!


On this site I was very critical of ethanol, fuel produce mostly from corn. My main problem was taking food, turning it into fuel jacking up food prices. For me it doesn't matter a lot, but there are poor people, like in Mexico where corn is a staple.

Anyway, besides consumers subsidizing this folly, our government also takes taxpayers dollars.


I kept track of the failure of ethanol as a fuel product a while and bored of it as the concepts failure did not attract popular attention.

Now a new hero on this issue, Al Gore has stepped up to the plate.

Al Gore's Ethanol Epiphany


He concedes the industry he promoted serves no useful purpose.

Go Al !

Anyone who opposes ethanol subsidies, as these columns have for decades, comes to appreciate the wisdom of St. Jude. But now that a modern-day patron saint—St. Al of Green—has come out against the fuel made from corn and your tax dollars, maybe this isn't such a lost cause.


Welcome to the college of converts, Mr. Vice President. "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

No kidding, and Mr. Gore said he knows from experience: "One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President."

Mr. Gore's mea culpa underscores the degree to which ethanol has become a purely political machine: It serves no purpose other than re-electing incumbents and transferring wealth to farm states and ethanol producers. Nothing proves this better than the coincident trajectories of ethanol and Mr. Gore's career.



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