Al Gore Does About Face on Ethanol

Addressing a green energy conference in Athens last month, former Vice President Al Gore told an audience that he only supported tax breaks and subsidies for corn-based ethanol to try and gain votes from farmers in Iowa and his native Tennessee.

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Reuters quoted Gore saying of the U.S. policy that is about to come up for congressional review. "First-generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small

"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," the wire service reported Gore saying.

Ethanol production this year is estimated to take up slightly over 40% of the total US corn crop. Opponents of ethanol say that producing the combustible materiel from corn raises food prices by creating an artificial shortage of corn.

Of course, this begs the question of whether Gore felt this way about ethanol all along, but voted for an EPA mandate requiring ethanol in 1994 (as Vice President, he was the tie-breaking vote) as a means of currying favor with farmers and agribusiness ahead of the '96 campaign, or if he simply changed his mind out of the blue. I'll refrain from using the word 'sincere', since it doesn't quite seem to belong in the same sentence as a snake-oil salesman selling doomsday unless we (but not Gore himself) forfeit our freedom of choice, our industry, our agriculture and our resources to accommodate his carbon trading ponzi scheme.

Credits and tax breaks for the ethanol subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress chooses to renew the $7.7 billion program.