McCain gives an impressive performance, but must confront Obama on alternative fuels

McCain, aside from the obvious physical impediments placed on his body from 5 1/2 years of captivity at the hands of sadistic communists, came off as the elder statesman, the more presidential of the two candidates yesterday evening. True to form, his opponent retreated to tired, polished responses peppered by his trademark "uhhhhhh" throughout each sentence. The only candidate who offered anything the public hadn't heard before was McCain. At the risk of quoting an overused term, the Republican candidate lived up to his "Straight Talk" persona, managing to speak directly to the questioner and the American people at the same time. On the other hand, his opponent's responses could've come out of any given pep rally or campaign commercial from the past 3 months or so.

Meanwhile, McCain has continually been silent when his detractors mention the dishonest claim that he voted against alternative fuels 25 times in his Senate career. In the third debate, McCain cannot let this pass unchallenged as he and Palin have in their respective debates. The votes his opponent cites do include wind, solar, and geothermal energy, and those are all fine, albeit inefficient forms of alternative energy. However, within those same bills are subsidies for biofuels. Do not make the mistake of confusing these biofuels with those of Brazil, whose sugar cane crop is both efficient and sustainable and the net carbon output actually does make it a true alternative fuel. Instead, these were subsidies for corn ethanol, which is perhaps the least efficient source of ethanol known to man while also being just as hazardous to the environment as the coal and petrol it's supposed to replace.



The reason Obama and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle continue to pretend this is a legitimate alternative has everything to do with the politics as usual and nothing to do with "change" of any sort to the tacit acceptance of corrupt and immoral agribusiness in the United States. For fear of challenging the image of the down-home, small town values, plaid shirt-wearing, pickup truck-driving farmers of America, McCain has failed to come right out and say that corn ethanol is bad for America and corn subsidies are bad for the entire planet. In fact, the mom and pop farmer is as much a victim of agricultural policies perpetuated by Obama as an obese child in the South Bronx who has been fed high-fructose corn syrup from the earliest stages of his life to rural peasants in the developing world who can't keep up with the ballooning price of grain. Quite often it's large expansive corporate farms that buy up increasingly large tracts of land for corn production. The vast majority of that corn (nearly 75%) goes towards ethanol, high fructose corn syrup, and feed for cattle. Ethanol is a viable solution and it could potentially be used to power the entire nations's vehicles-if that ethanol comes from a source other than corn. McCain needs to elaborate this point and drive home the fact that he has a record of bipartisan action on climate change, but that does NOT include further entrenching this nation in dangerous corn subsidies. These subsidies help factory farms drive up food prices, feed us unhealthy cattle, and use their profits for disinformation campaigns for high-fructose corn syrup and lobbying efforts for a brand of ethanol whose carbon output is on par with any traditional fossil fuel.

While the McCain campaign seems resigned to the beating they ritually take from Obama on ties to oil companies, the facts demonstrate that neither candidate is owned by the oil lobby (try here, too). On the other hand, Obama and prominent Democrats are literally in the pocket of the ethanol industry.

Mr. McCain advocates eliminating the multibillion-dollar annual government subsidies that domestic ethanol has long enjoyed. As a free trade advocate, he also opposes the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff that the United States slaps on imports of ethanol made from sugar cane, which packs more of an energy punch than corn-based ethanol and is cheaper to produce.

“We made a series of mistakes by not adopting a sustainable energy policy, one of which is the subsidies for corn ethanol, which I warned in Iowa were going to destroy the market” and contribute to inflation, Mr. McCain said this month in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de São Paulo. “Besides, it is wrong,” he added, to tax Brazilian-made sugar cane ethanol, “which is much more efficient than corn ethanol.”

Mr. Obama, in contrast, favors the subsidies, some of which end up in the hands of the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a windfall profits tax. In the name of helping the United States build “energy independence,” he also supports the tariff, which some economists say may well be illegal under the World Trade Organization’s rules but which his advisers say is not.

Many economists, consumer advocates, environmental experts and tax groups have been critical of corn ethanol programs as a boondoggle that benefits agribusiness conglomerates more than small farmers.

[bold is my emphasis]

For the first time in years, the Republicans have a candidate who is pro-stem cell research, pro-environment, pro-evolution; in a word, pro-science. This is the opening McCain needs to portray Obama as anti-science, anti-progress, and xenophobic. Moreover, it is cynical pandering in its rawest form. The Arizona Senator should propose that we dive head-first into algae-ethanol research (The most efficient ethanol source on Earth), while lifting trade barriers, including those on sugar, as a means to revitalize the economy and open re-open the marketplace of ideas.



Meanwhile, McCain can propose constructing algae-ethanol facilities (which are impervious to the surrounding climate and produce a constant yield) in rust belt cities like Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Detroit, Duluth, and Youngstown. It is imperative that McCain makes these facts known if he wants to seriously perpetuate his status as an independent reformer. That's putting country first and that's the kind of straight talk Obama lacks the courage to confront.