gpsman1 has a point- corn is not the only way. But if you try to discuss ethanol in this country without discussing corn, you would simply be ignoring reality. A great deal of the political capital behind this comes from politicians in corn states and agrobusiness giants who are spending heavily lobbying for legislation to promote and subsidize corn-based ethanol. So if I seem a little 'hung up on corn,' there's a reason for it.

We stand at a watershed moment in the ethanol production industry, and if it moves in the direction of corn, then a few agricultural interests win and they will profit handsomely, but the rest of us lose. This isn't a reason to abandon the idea of using ethanol altogether, but it is a reason to be very careful what you say about it and what you push for when you talk about the legislation that Congress will be debating and passing soon (I believe it is inevitable that they will).

Most of the time I find that corn pops up ominously in discussions of ethanol, because it's a baseline assumption for most people that ethanol comes from corn, and that's that. For instance, the story gpsman1 linked us to defines ethanol as "the so-called green fuel derived from mashing and fermenting corn." Politically speaking, ethanol and corn are starting to become mesh in people's minds, and when it comes time to make the policy decisions that will shape our energy future, the people with the power may end up using it foolishly. Yes, money for the Midwest is preferable to money for the Middle East, but that's a false dichotomy (those pop up a lot when people start getting rhetorical, don't they?). The choice isn't just oil or ethanol. It's oil, or corn-based ethanol, or cellulosic ethanol, or nuclear, or whatever. They aren't the same- there is no black and white, either-or, one-or-the-other decision.