"Obviously, We Have People Interested in Doing This, or the Project Wouldn't Be Taking Place."
Do this job long enough and your BS detector gets quite the workout. But rarely does an article telegraph the discrepancy between PR plans and the incipient rush of cold reality in such obvious terms. Lisa Taylor is the testy spinmeister in question: spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Agriculture. Or the U.S. Department of Transportation. Either way, she's promoting a pilot project that will allow Kansas gas stations to install pumps that dispense a variety of ethanol blends and "let consumers choose what blend they want." Yup, you heard right; a Sunflower state motorist will be able to choose between E10, E20, E30, E50 or E85 depending on, well, who the Hell knows? Anyway, as the Kansas City Star rightly reports, it's just a theory. The state is simply lowering regulatory hurdles, rather than subsidizing the "pour your own" ethanol pumps. In fact, only 28 stations in Kansas sell E85, and not a single one of them is a deep-pocketed nationally-branded franchisee. So, as you might expect, The Star reveals that "so far no sites for the test have been announced." Which triggered Ms. Taylor's ire. We're betting she doesn't get the last laugh on this one.
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Anyone besides me see the irony? How many hundreds of millions of dollars do you think the farmers in the state of Kansas are getting in federal corn subsidies to grow corn to be turned into ethanol? This despite the proven fact that ethanol as an auto fuel is a net loser in greenhouse gases and economics (it takes more CO2 to produce an energy unit from ethanol than it saves.) So, folks from Kansas have no problem PROFITING from the environmentalist whacko propaganda created ethanol craze, they just won't use the stuff in their own vehicles. Whoda thunk it?
It's a little disengenous to blame the ethanol hype on whacko environmentalist propaganda. I think most environmentalists recognize that ethanol is not a solution. Those that claim to be enviromentalist and support ethanol are fakers who are just hitching their wagon to the latest fad in order to appear green. Blame the current ethanol hyperbole on right wing "energy security" promoters and the vote-pandering, subsidy pedalling politicians of all stripes.
dean's got that one right 100%. Especially the politician part...
Does Kansas have enough water to grow corn in sufficient quantities? It's not called the Wheat State for nothing. BTW, when did Kansas have a "reasonable and proper" speed limit? I'm a child of the 50s, and I only remember Montana and Nevada having such a limit before 55 mph became the law of the land.