Ethanol in a Changing World

by Jeremy
(USA)

With the changing global environment, it has become clear that the current means of fuel for transportation will not be viable as we dive deeper into the 21st century. The global unrest and well as the pain the burning of traditional fuels reap on the environment will cripple the economy unless they are changed. The United States economy will reap instant benefits from the transition to an ethanol based fuel, but all this must be spurred on by a persistent and determined automobile industry.

For the sake of this paper, we will focus solely on the United States initially. While the United States was previously a respected world power before the administration of President George W. Bush, in the past eight years, the United States has fallen out of favor in many parts of the world. Unfortunately for the United States, these parts of the world generally seem to be host to the world's oil reserves. Venezuela, whose government owns the popular CITGO gas chain, is at odds with the United States.

Leader Hugo Chavez has spoken out against what he feels to be the unfair regime in America. He has grown to support Communist governments, and known enemies of the United States, as well as potential terrorist countries in Cuba and Iran most notably. Politically, it would be a disaster for the United States to continue the current route on which it is on. It is impossible for the United States to have the upper hand on any of these gas producing countries in the future because both the United States and the opposing countries know the overwhelming dependence that the United States has on these traditional fossil fuels.

A terrorist attack or a hurricane similar to that of Hurricane Katrina could once again put the United States populous on edge with the demand for gasoline outweighing what the United States can provide for itself. The United States does not have the oil reserves internally to maintain the rate at which we currently consume oil. This coupled with the increasing rate of consumption throughout the world will break the already weakening strain of gasoline distribution to the United States.

China has an automobile population that is growing faster than any country in the world. In addition, countries in the developing world are entering the automobile age, and due to a lack of finances, they are not doing so with the best of “green” interests at heart. It is up to the United States, still one of the leading oil consumers in the world, to take charge and create a demand for ethanol throughout the world. If the American consumer demands an ethanol powered vehicle, producers internally and abroad will create a better and more diverse ethanol based product. Corn is also an extremely easy crop to grow.

There are a plethora of places in the United States and around the world that could support corn crops. This is a better situation than the remoteness of most of the world’s oil reserves. Giving developing countries the ability to enter the world’s economy could be a benefit of an ethanol based system. Poorer countries that don’t have oil reserves would be given an excellent means of economic growth. Farmers will also feel the impact of an ethanol based transportation system. In an already heavily subsidized industry, it would save the government billions of dollars if farmland can be used in growing ethanol based fuels. This would be a boon to the economy of Middle America.

Obviously, fossil fuels are not a renewable resource and without a backup plan already in place, their will be no viable means, “green” or not, of fuel for the world’s transportation. The renewable resource of corn would is growable as long as there is a human to grow it. The extracting of oil and other fossil fuels also takes its toll on the landscape. The most beautiful parts of the world are being irrevocably damaged as millions of gallons of oil are extracted every day. It has become a hotly contested debate as to what to do with the Alaskan oil reserves that are in such a fragile part of the world.

The benefits of ethanol are obvious and many. Most importantly, the use of ethanol will reduce the current emitting of greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere. The reduction of these greenhouse gases will be a first important step towards reducing man’s effects on “global warming”. Lowering carbon monoxide emissions and other dangerous gases from the atmosphere is something that is within man’s control. As the unusually warm temperatures from this winter are already attesting, man’s imprint is already large. Waiting any longer before entering an ethanol based future is a risky venture.

Though the cost of a gallon of ethanol may be the same as the currently outrageous price of traditional gasoline’s currently, this will, in time, go down. As new technologies are developed and the proliferation of ethanol continues, ethanol should become a more reasonably priced commodity. The price of traditional fuels however will only continue to increase as the reserves continue to shrink, and the world becomes an ever more turbulent marketplace. It will only take one politican, or one outcry to change the course of the world.

It is very clear that ethanol is the fuel of the future, and the direction the United States, and the rest of the world must aggressively go in the very near future. A tax incentive needs to be put in place to pressure these companies to aggressive research and implement these new ethanol based technologies into their vehicles. The almighty dollar is the most important incentive that many capitalistic dollar driven companies fight for. Whether they are putting their bottom line first, or fighting for the Earth’s bottom, it doesn’t matter. As long as automobile producers are motivated to increase the supply and demand for ethanol and ethanol based vehicles. These are the roads that we must take, as a country, and as a people, to go towards the future.