Ethanol - Big Bio's Cash Cow

Ethanol delivers 30 percent fewer miles a gallon than gasoline and consumes almost as much fossil fuel as it replaces.  

Ethanol Could Leave the Wold Hungry One tankful of the latest craze in alternative energy could feed one person for a year, Lester Brown tells Fortune.

According to National Geographic, Biofuels as currently rendered in the U.S. are doing great things for some farmers and for agricultural giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. but little for the environment. Corn requires large doses of herbicide and nitrogen fertilizer and can cause more soil erosion than any other crop. And producing corn ethanol consumes just about as much fossil fuel as the ethanol itself replaces. Biodiesel from soybeans fares only slightly better. Environmentalists also fear that rising prices for both crops will push farmers to plow up some 35 million acres (14 million hectares) of marginal farmland now set aside for soil and wildlife conservation, potentially releasing even more carbon bound in the fallow fields.