The last time I checked it didn't take a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of gasoline. Don't ethanol powered cars drive on the same roads? What exactly is the point there? All subsidised things are equal? You don't have to consume one mile of road to produce one mile of road? You don't have to burn up one airport to produce another airport? Put oil in your tank and food in your stomach. You get the same amount of energy, and more food.
Ethanol is no longer an energy loser - hasn’t been for awhile. Plus the mash is excellent cattle feed, meaning you aren’t even losing the food stream.
So you have people screaming bloody murder because ethanol is subsidized, when if you removed subsidies from gasoline, we’d likely be paying double what we are.
The point is what makes an ethanol subsidy so much worse than an oil subsidy? What makes a road subsidy worse than a mass transit subsidy?
It seems ethanol has emerged as the best opportunity to relax our dependence on foreign oil. In that context, the “cost” of developing an alternative to oil can’t be measured only in dollars.
Right now, oil is costing us lives. And it’s only going to get more costly.