credit: Bulsti

All I can say is “FINALLY!”  Finally, someone from the political sphere admitted that throwing billions of dollars after corn-derived ethanol was not a good idea.  More specifically, Al Gore said it!

“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.

“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”

“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

And there you have it, folks: a politician admitting that his decision to support a program was not based on lofty scientific reasoning, not grounded in solid numerical measurements; no, he had a “fondness for the farmers.”  Ugh.

That is exactly the kind of environmentalism that Firefly Ecometrics is here to dispel, because it does so much more harm than good.  Now, when someone proposes a real, sensible, verifiable program to create renewable energy or improve the transportation sector, the public will say “We tried that with corn ethanol and it turned out to be a waste.”

Well, at least he came clean, and hopefully won’t make that mistake again.  Everyone is entitled to a bad decision once in awhile, but it’s telling of the political process that those bad decisions tend to follow money (lobbyists) or pandering (presidential bids.)

The only kind of ethanol I support comes from grapes.  And possibly malted grains with a hefty dose of hops.