Letter to the Editor: 'Food' ethanol deflects social responsibility

I remain convinced that the production of “food” ethanol is simply wrong and others around the world are beginning to agree. … In America, the land of free-flowing streams and clean lakes, we have yet to consider water as a limiting factor. During my career, I often told anyone who might listen that we would one day pay a very high price for drinking water and may see bloodshed over water rights. Those days are here sooner than I expected. We are now paying $8 per gallon for drinking water just to appear fashionable. This could easily become mandatory as competition for clean water increases.

Also, I believe it is morally wrong for any company to have unlimited use of our ground water and then return their polluted water to our streams. That is just what Gulfstream Bioflex LLC, has stated in court would happen if their plant is constructed east of Rogersville.

This should alarm everyone within a 100-mile radius, not just a few of us who live near this site. I have full confidence in the professional staff of Missouri Department of Natural Resources to see that this does not happen through their permitting system. Our objective now is to insure that each and every questionable detail is covered prior to the issuance of any and all permits.

Oh yes, just in case you thought you would be burning ethanol “Made in America” to help our farmers, you should know this: On top of the federal ethanol mandate, federal law grants a 50-cent tax credit for each gallon of ethanol a blender buys. Both domestic and imported ethanol qualifies for these subsidies. Chinese ethanol, however, benefits from one additional U.S. subsidy. In 2004, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im), a federal agency that finances the exports of U.S. companies, subsidized construction of an “ethanol dehydration facility” in Trinidad and Tobago – exactly the sort of facility through which foreign ethanol passes duty-free into the United States. So much for “made in America.”

In his essay, “Who Owns America?” University of Missouri professor John Ikerd said it best:

“Many issues concerning the natural environment are fundamentally moral or ethical. We should not be buying and selling pollution rights, because no individual has the moral right to pollute in the first place, and thus, has no right to sell it. Pollution of the environment is fundamentally morally wrong, the same as it is morally wrong to kill, to steal or enslave.”

To further quote Ikerd, “Any system of development that is not ecologically sound and economically viable and socially responsible just quite simply is not sustainable over time.”

In my opinion, the ethanol scam fails the test of all three. The large use of water, natural gas, corn and the resultant pollution of and water make it ecologically unsound. Without tax subsidies it is not economically viable. And due to both of these, the production of ethanol is most certainly not socially responsible.

Given time, the ethanol initiative will ultimately fail. The landscape will be left with tax-constructed monuments to short-sighted greed and to a government’s rush to quick-fix the fuel problem.

—David E. Pitts, certified biologist, Rogersville