The geography of ethanol’s support in Congress

I opposed ethanol as an energy technology while the rest of you watched “ADM, Supermarket to the World” commercials saturating PBS and network news. The 60ish (Peter Max like) psychedelic cartoons showing corn growing on the freeway with pumps on it; apparently growing fuel year round. I felt pretty alone, while (in Minnesota) leftist “experts” and “The American Lung Association” and the U of Minnesota (among many others including Paul Wellstone) had exhibits at the State Fair with patriotic speeches.

Now you are all so much smarter and can post more pictures to prove some other point. Perhaps you could overlay those maps with districts that export high protein food, and those that consume it. Single variable arithmetic is so persuasive. Multivariate calculus has poor political appeal.

So, somehow, now I find myself defending some aspects ethanol. Younger leftists absolutely will not accept that the late Paul Wellstone and Tom Harkin helped create this.

Nothing in the world is perfect to everybody, all the time.

As a sidenote, I would regularly go to Wellstone’s Environment and Energy monthly meetings pushing a hay crop extraction and cellulose biofuel process and got (to put it mildly) marginalized. While at the same time I had top researchers from the energy industry and government interested. But windmills and whiskey prevailed. Now there are kids calling this “advanced biofuels” asking for “research” money. How does anybody sort this out?