President Bush Hates Pork

President Bush really hates pork. You wouldn’t know that from the text of his State of the Union. He talked about a whole bunch of new spending, so you would think he is a big fan of pork. But oh no! He absolutely despises pigs.

He wants to force American to use 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels a year by 2017. This is a horrible idea. In 2006 20 percent of the total U.S. corn crop went into making an estimated 5 billion gallon of ethanol. President Bush wants to require us to use 7 times that amount, or 140% of the total US corn crop.

Where are we going to get this corn? Apparently Bush thinks, that “America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil.” That may be true, but I doubt it. Carter thought we were on the verge of massive coal liquefaction breakthrough in the late 1970s. After wasting $1.5 billion on the scheme, the experiment was ended in the early 1980s when it became obvious that coal liquefaction technology couldn’t compete with oil.

Like Carter’s coal liquefaction debacle, we will fail in Bush’s ethanol goal. We only have ten years increase our ethanol production by 7 times the current amount. Somehow we need to get cellulosic ethanol and other next-generation biofuel technologies out of the lab, scaled up to commercial size, and producing another 30 billion barrels of ethanol. That’s just crazy talk.

Besides wrecking economic havoc on all Americans who will be forced to pay exorbitant prices for gasoline blended with ethanol, this is bad news for pigs. Pigs eat corn and corn prices are going to skyrocket under Bush’s ridiculous plan. There are few things better than pulled pork from a Boston butt or baby back ribs. But Bush’s scheme will drive up the price of feed and the price of pork. This is a real tragedy (besides the fact that the idea is an affront to common sense).

Actually, the worst part of Bush’s ethanol plan is that it will likely starve many people in the third world. Lester Brown argues:

The competition for grain between the world

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