3 ms·

Great--let's outlaw ICE cars first, and regulate airlines too. We can't let those industries skirt by. Food Production is a greater societal need than travel m

Great--let's outlaw ICE cars first, and regulate airlines too. We can't let those industries skirt by. Food Production is a greater societal need than travel most people would agree.

adrianN 6y ago
Why not both? Humanity can in fact more than one problem at the same time.
- inimino 6y ago
  The fact that the verb is "" makes this comment perfect. ;-)
crowbahr 6y ago
Right. Food production is a greater societal need and a lot of corn goes into making ethanol for cars to burn instead of food. We don't have to outlaw ICE cars to make it more expensive to drive them, we just have to make corn ethanol more expensive for gas companies to cut their fuel with, and food corn cheaper for humans. Also: We need to grow less corn overall. We make way, way more of it than we need and not enough of other better veg.
- kickout 6y ago
  Corn is a poor ethanol crop. Period. It should not ever be used for its ethanol purpose. There are better crops suited for that purpose but the infrastructure in the US is set up for.....corn. Humans don't eat corn (or they eat a trivial percentage). 75% of the corn grown goes to feed animals (usually cattle) or cars (via ethanol). Yea we need to grow less corn. But we can't outlaw it. You just removed the livelihood for the Midwest. The current economic incentive structure is to grow corn (there literally is no downside). A solution that changes that has to include benefits for farmers, landowners, consumers, and society. It's not going to be easy (or cheap). https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-agriculture/ https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-ag...
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Biofuels are a gigantic waste. At some point I did the math for Germany. If we took the land used for energy crops and instead covered it with solar panels, that would produce enough energy to basically cover Germany's energy needs (or a least a large part of them, depending on eg storage efficiencies).
  - crowbahr 6y ago
    It's not just an economic incentive structure though: It's subsidies that make it a priority crop instead of anything else. We could be making so many other things instead. A tax on ethanol & cattle feed would do more to shift things than making it illegal. Make it cheap to grow for humans, but allow other forms of food crop to have a fighting chance.

Great--let's outlaw ICE cars first, and regulate airlines too. We can't let those industries skirt by. Food Production is a greater societal need than travel most people would agree.

adrianN 6y ago

Why not both? Humanity can in fact more than one problem at the same time.

inimino 6y ago
The fact that the verb is "" makes this comment perfect. ;-)

crowbahr 6y ago

Right. Food production is a greater societal need and a lot of corn goes into making ethanol for cars to burn instead of food. We don't have to outlaw ICE cars to make it more expensive to drive them, we just have to make corn ethanol more expensive for gas companies to cut their fuel with, and food corn cheaper for humans. Also: We need to grow less corn overall. We make way, way more of it than we need and not enough of other better veg.

kickout 6y ago
Corn is a poor ethanol crop. Period. It should not ever be used for its ethanol purpose. There are better crops suited for that purpose but the infrastructure in the US is set up for.....corn. Humans don't eat corn (or they eat a trivial percentage). 75% of the corn grown goes to feed animals (usually cattle) or cars (via ethanol). Yea we need to grow less corn. But we can't outlaw it. You just removed the livelihood for the Midwest. The current economic incentive structure is to grow corn (there literally is no downside). A solution that changes that has to include benefits for farmers, landowners, consumers, and society. It's not going to be easy (or cheap). https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-agriculture/ https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-ag...
- adrianN 6y ago
  Biofuels are a gigantic waste. At some point I did the math for Germany. If we took the land used for energy crops and instead covered it with solar panels, that would produce enough energy to basically cover Germany's energy needs (or a least a large part of them, depending on eg storage efficiencies).
- crowbahr 6y ago
  It's not just an economic incentive structure though: It's subsidies that make it a priority crop instead of anything else. We could be making so many other things instead. A tax on ethanol & cattle feed would do more to shift things than making it illegal. Make it cheap to grow for humans, but allow other forms of food crop to have a fighting chance.