Richard Warren *75

5 Years Ago

An Easier and Cheaper Solution

I question the need for carbon capture from ethanol production, and the building of a huge pipeline. Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to stop the production of ethanol instead? I realize that farmers have come to depend heavily upon government subsidies for the growing of corn for ethanol, and that they would object to the idea of stopping, but I also know that corn is a "heavy feeder" crop and needs large amounts of fertilizer, made from petroleum, in order to thrive. All of this taken together seems counterproductive. I also wonder about the viability of the use of CO2 injection in order to produce more petroleum from existing wells in Texas. Somehow I get the feeling that all this is driven more by the fossil-fuel industry than by the need to fight climate change. We already have the technology to produce and store all of our power from wind and solar, which of course can be used to power the transportation industry as well as homes and businesses. What we need is to scale up this technology to industrial size. Countries like Germany are way ahead of us. If we continue to listen to the fossil-fuel industry's foot-dragging story, the amount of carbon produced will create an extremely warm world indeed.

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