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[zach]

I'm surprised no one has responded to this yet! I can think of one really big example in the U.S....

Corn Based Ethanol
- Cars aren't designed for it so it causes lower gas mileage and more pollution.
- It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn than it creates.
- Diversion of mass quantities of corn to Ethanol is causing food prices to dramatically rise around the world.
- The boom in corn ethanol in the U.S. is subsidized by tax dollars that could invested in better options.
- I also heard someone on NPR say that if we took all of the farmland in the U.S. to grow corn for ethanol it still wouldn't produce enough gas to meet the current U.S. demand.

The only good part of corn ethanol is that it reduces reliance on foreign oil and keeps more of the money in the country. Besides that it's a losing proposition...

You'll notice I was sure to say "corn ethanol" because I'm not saying all ethanol is bad. Ethanol or Alcohol produced from sugar cane has been a great success in Brazil. I read somewhere, it might have been Rolling Stone that for every unit of energy that goes into producing sugar cane ethanol 13 more units of energy are produced. I think this is because it distills much easier than corn and can be grown more efficiently but I'm not sure of all the details.