Biofuels cause beer prices to rise

In order to really hate something, all my beer-drinking analog buddies have to hear is that something is raising the price of their golden nectar. Well, all the government mandates and subsidies to ethanol and other biofuels is dramatically increasing the cost of beer. Now if you really believe that biofuels are saving the planet then I guess having my buddies pay more for their beverages and refreshments (as we call it on expense reports) is a small price to pay. But the linked article points out that the carbon cost of planting, fertilizing, harvesting, and converting corn to fuel releases 17 to 420 times as much carbon dioxide as just pumping black goo from the earth and burning it. Occam’s razor baby- the simpler solution is always better. I don’t think carbon dioxide is a pollutant, I think of it as the elixir of life. Anyone that has read Ed Rosenthal’s Marijuana Growers Guide knows that when you really want those green buds to get gigantic, you release CO2 into the greenhouse.

CO2 is a natural, non-poisonous gas present in the atmosphere, which plants absorb and use during photosynthesis to synthesise sugars and organic compounds for energy and growth. Plants can effectively use CO2 up to about .15 percent concentration, about five times the concentration (.03) naturally present in the atmosphere. Increasing the CO2 dramatically increases the growth rate, often up to twice the rate of growth in plants in a natural atmosphere.

We are seeing this already, with tree-ring data that shows improved growth in plants due to the CO2 level going from 0.03% to 0.04% over the last 100 years. That increase in tree ring growth was misinterpreted by the IPCC to come up with the discredited hockey stick graph of global temperature increase. Me, I think that taking all that non-bio-active carbon out of the bowels of the earth and converting it to CO2 where it can assist plant growth and warm the planet is the best possible thing we can do. It will bring about a plentiful time that was referred to in the Bible as the Garden of Eden. Burn baby burn. So I guess I do have to come out in favor of biofuels, as they are putting far more carbon dioxide into the air than fossil fuels. This will cause global climate change for sure, and there will be winners and losers, but overall the plant will be better off if it is warmer and things grow better. As a humanist, I have to promote anything with such a clear benefit to humanity.

In order to understand why we have all these biofuel subsides you need to understand public choice theory. This theory points out that corn farmers will gladly write their congressmen and hire lobbyists and vote for subsidies and special favors. Since the cost to us, the mass of consumers, is only a few dollars that means that governments tend to become favor-peddlers, and we, the people, always lose. Always. The same goes for dairy subsidies, and textile tariffs and the ten thousand other forms of corporate welfare that our pack of cronies in Washington hands out to special interest groups. Public choice theory deals with concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. Sure, the politicians tried to look good and caring and all earth-conscious, but when the pick a specific technology and mandate it as they have with ethanol in our gasoline, they are really just handing out the pork under the cover of moral righteousness.

So now we are literally starving babies in third-world counties since the price of wheat has tripled and corn is going through the roof. Perhaps all the do-gooders in the world need to learn the law of unintended consequence. And remember, that is a law, not a theory.