The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 545
numbers...how American farmers pretty much grow as much corn now for human consumption as they ever did, and that the great bulk of corn used for
ethanol doesn't deprive anyone of their fair share of tortilla chips or movie popcorn?
Let's pretend for a moment that you wrote the article - or at least read the contents before agreeing to put your name on it - didn't anyone tell you that corn is
not just used as a direct food source for cattle, pigs, and fowl; but that dried
distillers' grains - the protein part of the corn kernel left after distillation - is also
used to feed the animals that we then eat? Therefore, in the opening sentence
of the article when you (or they) wrote "... that roughly 40% of America's corn
crop goes to manufacture ethanol added to gasoline...that is more than the second largest use of corn — as feed for cattle, pigs and chickens — which consumes 36% of the annual corn crop" that you could pretty much add together
the 40% and the 36% to say that that's how much of the annual corn crop goes
to feed the animals that we then eat? Did you take any math classes at Harvard?
Do you think that feeding people Fritos corn chips is better than feeding them
beef, pork or chicken? And since when did you become a bleeding-heart activist
worrying about feeding a hungry world? I found no paper ever authored by you
that offers any sympathetic mindset; is this a new role for you, Peter?
Oh, and in the second paragraph, it mentions people rioting. People riot for all
kinds of reasons: basketball fans sometimes riot when their team WINS a championship; people in third-world countries often riot because their dictator tells
them to. You know this, or at least you should, so why even make it an issue?
And then the article makes two incorrect statements about prices. First you say
that corn prices have risen because of its use for ethanol, and then you say that
world prices for oil and (natural) gas have sunk. Corn prices haven't risen because of ethanol use, they rise because of commodity speculators and transportation costs related to oil prices. And world crude oil prices for 2018 are the
highest they've been in four years.
As I said above, why did the article begin with such puerile and easy to refute
statements? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it did, but do you and whoever paid
you have such little respect for the American public that you think you can get
away with this nonsense?
You then launch into the real meat of the article, a contrived double-talk explanation of the RIN system that is worthy of Professor Irwin Corey. The RIN
