Let’s see. If that were true, then with E85 the loss would be about 8.5 x 6 or 51 mpg.. Your car would run in reverse on E85!

Somebody is making a mistake or making things up.

Perhaps you were driving faster or going up hill. No way can a 10 percent ethanol blend cause an 18.75 percent decline in mileage unless someone poked a hole in your gas tank.

I have been using E10 for over 20 years and never experienced such a loss of mpg in any of my cars or trucks. Even with E85 compared to E10 in my flex fuel Ranger the loss is only in the area of 20 percent.

And lately E85 locally is priced more than 20 percent below E10. So on price per mile it is cheaper.

The cry will be, “Stop eating my fuel, fatso!”

And even Brazil’s self-sufficiency hides certain facts. Brazil had a head start, but for most of that time, ethanol was heavily subsidized. And even now without subsidies, gasoline has to contain at least 20% ethanol in Brazil. The ethanol revolution in Brazil was not a free market success, and even then depends on a lot of factors that you can’t duplicate in other countries. Kudos for them for weaning themselves off the big oil teat, but you can’t simply copy their methods everywhere and get the same results.

The days of customers dictating socio-economic conditions to commodity suppliers (oil, food, ethanol, etc. actually passed North America (and I definitely include Canada) by about 20 years ago. Its just taken a while for this fact to catch up to the body politic.

While I suppose these types of demands are well intentioned the fact is that you can not ‘legislate’ prosperity in a foreign country – anymore then ones own.

In the long run they distort markets and actually hurt ours (and theirs) economic interests.

“Some 35 years after the first oil shock, Brazil has moved from dependence on imports to self-sufficiency while the United States still relies on imported oil for more than half its needs. In the same period, Brazil has developed the world’s most advanced ethanol program, based on sugar cane, while the U.S. corn ethanol program is essentially a wasteful folly of dubious carbon offset merits.”

The US hasn’t been smart in dealing with this problem since the 1980s.

“For example, creating a co-dependent economic relationship with the Middle East keeps it from turning away from us geo-politically.”

Gee, I don’t see how that has been go well lately! How many Brazilian terrorist groups are trying to attack the US?

http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/116-6/focus-abs.html

cost of shipping…

My bad. I meant the environmental impact of shipping. Rough night. Text amended.

pathetic workers’ wages…

Yes, well, today’s solidarity day– in my mind. And I drink fair trade coffee. LOTS of fair trade coffee.

deforestation of Brazil…

Your link isn’t all that convincing. All it says is that Brazil’s Prez says ethanol production won’t lead to de-rainforestation (like I said, rough night).

Brazil’s soybean-based bio-diesel production gives us some indication of the effects:

“Soybean farms cause some forest clearing directly,” said Dr. Philip Fearnside, a researcher at the Brazilian National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA) and a highly regarded Amazon scholar. “But they have a much greater impact on deforestation by consuming cleared land, savanna, and transitional forests, thereby pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers ever deeper into the forest frontier. Soybean farming also provides a key economic and political impetus for new highways and infrastructure projects, which accelerate deforestation by other actors.”

I think it has alot to do with economic leverage. If we buy goods en masse from a particular country, then the U.S. gains a certain amount of political influence in that country. For example, creating a co-dependent economic relationship with the Middle East keeps it from turning away from us geo-politically.

Unfortunately, the U.S. has traditionally had a rocky relationship with Brazil. We do not have strong ethnic ties or any kind of significant military relationship. Bush has made some inroads in terms of climate change, AIDS, and Latin American politics, but Brazil tends to look to Europe instead (perhaps as a result of some infamous immigration).

Before the U.S. commits to leaning on Brazil for our energy needs, perhaps many other things need to happen — i.e, guarantees of dependability, political stability, and increased bi-lateral ties.

And our attempt at self-sufficiency through corn-based ethanol is a scam. Brazil has a good combination of factors that make sugar cane ethanol production feasible–something that our temperate climate can’t support as well.

So how is it the large a third world country can do this but the most powerful, strongest, richest (insert your own maxim) country cannot even bring itself to contemplate this as it stands at the precipice of an energy doomsday, some 30 years later?

And people call it an empire :)

pathetic workers’ wages… As if Brazilian agricultural workers would be earning more if we didn’t buy their products and took our money elsewhere. Again, no cause for celebration, but ethanol is not making anything worse.

deforestation of Brazil… It turns out that Brazilian sugarcane is not much grown in their rain forest regions.

Sorry, Robert, a bit of a strikeout there with your criticisms.

And when did we start to care about foreign worker wages? Cripes, you can’t buy anything that is not made in China anymore.

Yes, Cohen is wordy though.