Apparently the leader of the free world forgot to take one thing into account yesterday when laying out his plan for energy independence. It can't be done. At least not the way he's planning to do it.
It won't be possible to produce enough corn in the United States to meet President George W. Bush's goal of a 35 billion gallon output of renewable fuels in ten years, analysts said on Wednesday.
[...]
"There was nothing new for us, a year ago it was kind of an innovative thing to talk about but not today," said Don Roose, president and analyst for U.S. Commodities, Des Moines, Iowa referring to Bush's remarks about renewable fuels.
"He's talking about renewable fuels coming from sources other than corn, like switch grass or wood chips, and there is no plan ahead on how to handle all of that," Roose said.
[...]
"There is no way 35 billion gallons of ethanol is going to come from corn. That would take 12.5 billion bushels of corn, that's more than the total supply of corn and takes away all of it from exports and livestock...and we aren't producing that much corn so it's a reality scenario that's not good," Gidel said.
Wait. Maybe there is a way out of this. We could import corn. Then we would no longer be at the mercy of foreign oil producing countries for our energy supplies. We would be at the mercy of foreign grain producing countries for our energy supplies and that's much better.
If it's true that people get the leaders that they deserve, we have been a very bad people.
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