Is it immoral to make ethanol out of corn during deadly food shortages when other technology is available?

Question

All you have to do is convert any diesel car to "biodiesel" so that it can run on used cooking oil--which you can get from any restaurant for free and cut waste at the same time.

"Waste vegetable oil

As of 2000, the United States was producing in excess of 11 billion liters of waste vegetable oil annually, mainly from industrial deep fryers in potato processing plants, snack food factories and fast food restaurants. If all those 11 billion liters could be collected and used to replace the energetically equivalent amount of petroleum (an ideal case), almost 1% of US oil consumption could be offset.[6] However, use of waste vegetable oil as a fuel competes with some already established uses."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_vegetable_oil

Answer 1

Most of the yellow grease in the US has been recovered and reused for decades. The current value is about 32 cents per pound, and has become valuable enough for the addicts and criminals to steal.  In the past 6 years, the price has quadrupled.  Diesel at the pump has a value of about 70 cents a pound, so it will not be long before the demand for yellow grease will drive the price to equity with diesel.

Answer 2

I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S IMMORAL BUT IT IS CAUSING THE PRICE OF FOOD TO GO UP.

Answer 3

there is no deadly food shortage in the world today. the price of food has been driven up by the cost of transportation for the most part. where is this rationing happening at? not where i live that's for sure.

every place i have seen the used vegetable oil is not just thrown out it is sold to a recycling company to be recycled. even if it was just thrown out if people started to use it, it would produce a market that others would exploit and sell at inflated prices because of the demand.

sorry your news stories are not rationing they are limiting what people can buy, based on their own decisions based on what is probably price based, and not a shortage. it is no different than if a store limited your purchase to, say 3 items of a product on sale. rationing would be a limit based on a shortage not a store or a chains wants and needs.

Answer 4

Bio-diesel and ethanol are just plain stupid....

Ethanol doesn't burn as efficiently and even though it is cleaner, you have to burn at least twice as much to obtain the same energy as gasoline.  PLus, to make ethanol, you grow plants....  Usually wheat or corn that absorbs some CO2 but then a primary product of fermentation is CO2...  Then you burn out more CO2 when it is combusted....  So that is just plain stupid...

Bio-diesel...  Do you think that CO2 is less in bio-diesel?  Exactly!  Bio-diesel does absolutely nothing good for the environment and is also a waste of the food resources that it takes to make it...  That is unless every single fast food restaurant can suppot millions of vehicles on a daily basis.....

But, keep trying, something will pop up.  Liberals believe that if we shut down oil altogether, that some other technology will magically appear....  Amazing their thought process.

Answer 5

yes, people are dying of starvation, genocide, malaria, Aids. alternative energy shouldn't be our biggest worry

http://www.youtube.com/skyrish99

Answer 6

Definitely. You're on the money

Answer 7

Absolutely.  Spot on. Except you're wrong about human-made global warning.

Answer 8

What isn't propaganda these days? Who doesn't have an agenda? Do you REALLY care if some people in Africa die of starvation? Why? How does it affect you?

Sure the whole gas thing sucks, and while ethanol, etc might not be the answer, it is better than nothing.

So my answer is no, why should we feed those people.

Answer 9

Gluttony is immoral.  People who think they need SUVs to drive to the grocery store or commute to work are immoral.  Folks who sit around on their obese behinds while wolfing down everything they can fit in their mouths are immoral.  Sending money overseas for oil so the rich can build palaces while most of their countrymen are starving is immoral.  The whole attitude of 'if I can afford it, why not?' is immoral.

There are a lot of things that are a whole lot more immoral than making ethanol out of corn.  Too many people are ignorant about the process and the future, and are just buying into the propaganda.  Like this baloney about processing plants being thousands of miles away from the fields-most of them are very near the point of production.  And what about the cost of getting oil from where IT is produced to the refineries, and then to the distribution point(s)?  Seems like a lot of people want to conveniently forget a few little details

like that.

Corn-based ethanol certainly isn't the long term solution to our energy needs,  but calling it 'immoral' only opens up a Pandora's Box of deadly sins.

Answer 10

when has there ever been a shortage of corn?

Answer 11

with the Fischer-Tropsch process we can make ethanol from trash, sewage, AG waste, old tires. ect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tro...

http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/arc...

http://www.hart-isee.com/index.php?page=...

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/bu...

the best part is no more land fills or treated sewage water putting drug and chemical in our rivers.

plus about 75% of the hazardous waste in the US can be used as feed for this process.

Answer 12

100% agree w/ you!

  The conversion of millions of acres of corn to produce fuel instead of food will be remembered as the monumental foolishness of America's gov't.

But, it's up to US to change it!

Never re-elect Congress!

Answer 13

i would not say it is immoral. but i definitely think there are far better uses for food crops. the boom in palm oil and soya has also lead to deforestation in the third world so ethanol is doing more harm then good from a global warming stand point.

its not te environmentalists that are pushing ethanol. its the farming lobby. ans they have the most to gain from it.

BTW vegetable oil is different from biodiesel. the latter is a more processed form of vegetable oil so that it will burn cleaner.

Answer 14

The people dealing with this question don't have a clue.  

Ethanol has about 85% of the energy per gallon as gasoline NOT 50%.  I know I use it in my flexfuel vehicle every day.

Ethanol is not causing rising food prices, nor is it causing any substantial food shortages.

The biggest factor in rising food prices is the increase in oil prices.  There is more transportation costs in the food at the store in many cases than there is raw food costs.

Ethanol uses just a small part of the corn, which by the way is not human food, and never has been.  The corn used for ethanol is corn that has fed cattle.  As a byproduct of ethanol production most of the food value is retained as DDG (Dried Distiller Grain) that is then fed to cattle, just as it has always been.

Folks, wake up.  Big oil is putting out propaganda on ethanol and the politicians are being influenced by oil industry lobbyists using false statistics to turn them against ethanol, which is at least a small part of a solution to oil scarcity and high prices.

EXCUSE ME  ....   BIG OIL DOES NOT OWN ETHANOL!!!  MOST OF THE OIL COMPANY OWNED REFINERIES REFUSE TO EVEN MIX ETHANOL WITH GASOLINE.  THE PETROLEUM JOBBERS AND WHOLESALERS HAVE TO DO IT AFTER THE FACT.  THIS SHOWS YOU NEED TO FIND OUT MORE.

Answer 15

No, I do not think it is immoral.  I do agree that vegetable oil is a viable source of energy, but 1% is certainly not enough in and of itself to make a significant dent in our energy dependence and therefore should not be adapted to use via infrastructure unless it can be combined with some other alternative energy source; until such time the people who wish to use vegetable oil should just do their own conversions and collect the oil themselves, rather than expecting to be able to drive down to the local convenience store and fill up from a pump.

As far as ethanol itself, someone else mentioned that much of the byproduct of production is still usuable as feedstock, which is a very significant point so far avoided by most of the ethanol naysayers.

My opinion is that we are going to have to change a LOT of our habits of energy consumption, from fuel to food.  Using corn as livestock feed is a lot less efficient than converting it to ethanol, and we eat way too much red meat as it is with the resulting health issues, not to mention the impact of livestock on the environment.  Is it somehow more moral to use excessive food production capacity so we can consume fast food burgers one after another than it is to use it to fuel our cars and feed the offal to our future Big Macs?

I don't think so-and I do see corn-based ethanol as simply one step in the direction of energy independence.  In time to come, once the infrastructure is in place to produce and distribute ethanol and the technology advances, we'll see a variety of products used other than corn.  Cellulose-based fuels, algae...I think the ideal solution for part of our energy needs is using corn stalks, etc.  My sources tell me that up to 50% of the corn stalks from a field harvest could be used without significantly compromising the fertility offered by leaving the organic material on (or in) the ground.   Maybe someone will develop a refining method that includes pouring the vegetable oil into the mix along the way...who knows.

It is certainly important to consider the long-term benefits and impact of any alternative energy source, whether it is corn-based ethanol or vegetable oil.   And there are moral implications and our responsibilities to society at large in virtually any arena of consumption.  But it isn't always as clear cut as some would have us believe; pulling up to a drive up window in an SUV and ordering a happy meal, then dashing home and booting up a computer to discuss the morality of using corn for fuel strikes me as a little bourgeois...not that I am accusing you in particular of being a modern day Marie ("let them eat cake") Antoinette, it's just an example of how most of us are doing things as a culture right now.

Answer 16

Absolutely!

It is not only immoral, but makes no sense at all.

The entire process seems to be using more energy from fossil fuels to produce something that has no benefits and only detriments.

Some 'Inconvenient Truths' which are conveniently overlooked about ethanol production.

1) Land which was previously producing food crops are starting to produce fuel crops, reducing the capacity of food production.

2) Since the infrastructure has not been properly set up prior to full implementation, i.e. processing plants near the point of production of these crops, the huge bulk of raw materials has to be transported to the processing facilities using conventional fuel sources.(sometimes thousands of miles away.

At best 4 container loads to produce 1 container of the final usable product, at worst, 10.

3) Only a minor portion of the crop is actually usable in producing the final product.

4) People tend to think that all that is needed to produce ethanol is to add some yeast to the must(the fermenting mixture), and after a few days you have something which can power your car!

The fact is that this is only the first step required to produce ethanol of sufficient concentration for use in an internal combustion engine.

Even with the yeasts which are considered as being 'high alcohol tolerant', the production will cease at less than 25% alcohol production.

The rest of the water has got to removed by distillation.

The distillation process requires a vast amount of energy to separate the alcohol from the water.

This energy is using even more conventional fuel supplies.

I will admit that on a large scale production, 'vacuum techniques' are probably used to minimize the amount of energy required, but it is still energy which is wasted for something as insane as this.

5) 'IF' so-called 'Global Warming' were caused by CO2 or methane gases (which they are not), this entire farce would only be causing more damage than helping.

6) The fermentation process actually produces CO2 gas as the yeast breaks down the sugars and starches down to produce the alcohol. The net product is that whatever the crop used to produce the alcohol, the CO2 which was removed from the atmosphere, is still going to produce the same amount of CO2 if not more in the process.

I could go on.

I do believe that we should all do our part to reduce our impact on the environment by recycling as much as possible, and stop wasting and abusing our resources, but this is not the way to go about it!

I do agree with you completely about using waste cooking oil.

It makes perfect sense, since the energy to convert it to a usable fuel for transportation, or heating purposes would be minimal.

I hate to see anything go to waste!

Answer 17

No.  But it is a dreadful waste of resources.

Answer 18

it's inefficient, but as long as God's resources are being used for some purpose and not completely wasted, there are worse things.