Necessary Roughness

The International Herald Tribute reports that President Bush addressed the increasing cost of food due to ethanol demand.

The boom in alternative fuels, he said, was “beginning to affect the price of food. And so we got to do something about it.”

The government “doing something” got us here.

But, he said, the solution was not to back away from ethanol, but to develop ways to make ethanol from agricultural wastes, wood chips or similar materials. The Energy Department has spent nearly $1 billion trying to incubate a “cellulosic ethanol” industry, he said.

If the industry were going to be viable, venture capitalists would invest the dollars voluntarily. Instead our tax dollars are being used to benefit the ethanol industry.