Wes Clark will lobby for booze

General Wes Clark, championing science, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Wow: Wes Clark just signed up to lobby on behalf of ethanol manufacturers, Ben Smith reports.

The photo is from the first Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas, where Clark appeared on the "Championing Science" panel. According to Smith, Clark's going over to lobby for ethanol with Newt Gingrich.

Clark will be shilling for an industry predicated on the dubious assumptions that corn-based ethanol is a viable economic proposition for the USA and a boon to the environment. Neither is well-supported scientifically, and I'm sure Clark knows how shaky the evidence is.

Comments

[Penn Bullock]

In other news:

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2009-02-05/news/indicted-miami-beach-weapons-dealer-efraim-diveroli-is-still-making-millions-of-dollars/

[Xanthippas]

I must say, I was a little misled by the title. In fact, I was not aware that booze even needed a lobby.

[mudkitty]

Ouch.

[Alon Levy]

I remember how on the science panel, Clark said good physics was necessary to defeat the "Godless Soviet Empire." That, to me, was the critical insight into his philosophy. To Clark, science is a tool of national security, good because when designing an airplane, two and two have to equal four. Ethanol may not improve national security, but it certainly looks the part: it's homegrown, it displaces oil (mainly but not just by burning coal instead), and it's centered around farmers in the Heartland. Nationalism is of course not always that crass or rural, but it usually is; urban nationalism, of the type peddled by Giuliani, is less common, especially in the US.

[stewart]

There's better and worse current sources of ethanol, and better future sources of ethanol. If he's lobbying for corn ethanol, as it appears, and if the current administration is committed to science and rational economics, as they state, then it's a dead issue. Better cash the check right away, becuse there may not be many more to come.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Exactly, stewart. US corn ethanol is a far cry from Brazilian sugarcane ethanol.

As the saying goes, corn ethanol is for drinking, water's for fighting over.

[David Grenier]

Looks like someone wants to win the Iowa Caucus in 2016.

[TB]

I got no problem with ethanol, but getting it from corn doesn't add up.

Then again, with all the former pineapple fields in Hawaii sitting there fallow, being saved for expensive housing developments no one can no longer afford, we COULD start planting cane again.

Refine it on site into ethanol and then ship it back to the mainland via bulk carries burning bio bunker oil recovered from local sources (on either end of the trip).

Also, refining it on site would cause less overall pollution from the plant, since it's sitting out in the middle of the ocean.

Oh, and I bet if really wanted to, we could plant more cane in the Caribbean basin/Central America, and work on a deal buying X% of what Brazil produces (in bulk) in a year.

[Anacher Forester]

There seems to be no is no end to my disillusionment this week. I actually had respected Clark.

-AF
Andrew Sullivan Is A Fraud

[rvman]

Also, refining it on site would cause less overall pollution from the plant, since it's sitting out in the middle of the ocean.

Only if "Pollution" is defined as "Something which contaminates my back yard or affects my breathing." Dumping CO2 in the atmosphere is no less warming in Hawaii than Houston, and dumping other airborne pollutants or water pollusion is even worse in Hawaii, because anything harmed by the pollution in Houston is already dead.

[TB]

Actually, I wasn't talking about CO2, I said "refining it on site would cause less overall pollution from the plant, since it's sitting out in the middle of the ocean."

As in::

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxyl_radical#Astronomical_importance

[Alon Levy]

Oh, and I bet if really wanted to, we could plant more cane in the Caribbean basin/Central America, and work on a deal buying X% of what Brazil produces (in bulk) in a year.

See, that would require allowing bulk imports from developing countries. That's the last thing American farmers want. It's far cheaper for them to lobby for continued subsidies and protectionism than to revamp their operations for global competition.

Remember: every trade barrier exists because someone lobbied for the government to put it there.

[TB]

"That's the last thing American farmers want."

Yes, and how unfortunate for them, and us.

That is what stands in the way of solving problems logically.

[Alon Levy]

Logic doesn't win you the Iowa caucuses. You might as well try telling white people in Arizona that border controls don't really work, or telling Michiganders what everyone else thinks about their cars.

[cfrost]

Even if ethanol were a much more efficient fuel than gasoline/diesel, it would still require a colossal amount of water to irrigate and land to grow. Every acre of which will no longer support any wildlife and will generate fertilizer and pesticide runoff. Even if we figure out how to produce cellulosic alcohol from switchgrass or whatever, we’ll consume land that cannot be produced with any technology.

All means of producing energy for an industrialized American population of 300 million and growing, much less a world population of 6.5 billion, will come with unavoidable and often fairly dreadful environmental and economic costs. The United States will never be energy independent and the outlook for fueling a grossly overpopulated world is hardly rosy. When politicians, including Obama, mouth patently absurd nonsense about achieving American energy independence they’re being either ignorant or irresponsible.

[Alon Levy]

I don't think water is the problem. The parts of the US and Brazil that grow ethanol don't really have water problems. Land is a bigger problem, there really isn't that much arable land in the world that isn't under cultivation. Ethanol doesn't come at the expense of virgin land, but food crops, raising food prices to stratospheric levels.

[andy]

Another problem is the human cost of harvesting sugar cane. Spiegel did this great story about the poor people who have to harvest cane- it's as close to slavery as you can get:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,602951,00.html

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Andy, thanks for posting this.