The Big Biofuels Blog

What it comes down to is the lingering effect of 70s hippies making alcohol fuel and supporting windmils and solar, giving Democrats a traditional support for bio-fuels. Those 70s hippies are Democrat senators and corporate CEOs now, and are still supporting alcohol fuel, solar and wind.

Then the big lie got going among conservatives that ethanol is SUBSIDIZED but that good ol gasoline is not subsidized. You can get a bloody nose and two black eyes for pointing out to a conservative the 21 billion dollars of petroleum support in the 2007 farm bill; conservatives are usualy in complete denial of all oil subsidies.

Of course gasoline has been feeding at the subsidies trough for a lot longer than ethanol has. In fact the Colorado oil companies are panicking right now at the threat of losing their 230 to 320 million dollars Colorado state property tax subsidies, afraid that the Colorado state legislature is going to take it away from them and give it instead to the alternatives.

Subsidies are difficult to eradicate once they get given. The group that gets them is pretty good at lobbying for them and the people who give them, millions of voters generaly doesn't notice the 0.001% of their taxes which go as individual subsidies... I don't know a way out of that problem.