It’s not the product …

Glenn Reynolds, I think, gets it exactly right on ethanol.

The problem with ethanol is a government-subsidy problem, and a trade-barrier problem. It’s not a problem with ethanol itself. Make it out of something other than food, and lower the barrier to Brazilian ethanol imports, and it would help our current situation a lot.

From what I can tell, there is nothing uniquely terrible about ethanol (then again, there is nothing exceptionally wonderful about corn-based ethanol, either). There is, however, something potentially destructive in the false economy we’ve created. In today’s column, I write “that government, on both the local and national level, has mandated and subsidized ethanol, creating an artificial market that incentivizes production of a wasteful energy.”

I also write: “Not only are presidential candidates promoting dangerous fallacies about energy but, last I checked, they weren’t crisscrossing the nation in chariots hitched to teams of flying unicorns.”

That second bit was just gratuitous. I wanted to get flying unicorns into a column. But the fact is, nationally, we’re forsaking market-driven energy solutions out of frustration. We want a cure now. If we happen to have ethanol and wind farms, well that must be the answer. Innovation and technology, especially when it comes to an issue as vast and complicated as energy, is going to take a long time. With any luck, because of this fiasco, the nation has learned a valuable lesson about the unintended consequences of government subsidies, the importance of consumer choice and our unhelpful tendency to hastily fall in line behind any idea, just as long some bureaucrat puts the word “green” in the promotional material.

Who am I kidding?

One of the best reads on this, and related topics, is Robert Bryce’s superb Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence. Bryce predicted much of the ethanol fiasco years ago.