From the Private Sector Development Blog comes a link to a Foreign Affairs article with the ominous title of “”How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.”
It’s worth reading in its entirety because it looks beyond just the U.S. and our politically-driven mania for corn-based ethanol. And here’s one factoid that leaps from the page:
Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn – which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year.
Not that my Rover will run on pure ethanol…or that a person could sustain themselves merely on corn for a year. But the energy trade-off in shocking.