Short answer: because biofuels are about taking money from people who are going to be extremely hard-pressed and giving it to corporations in the guise of a futile attempt to preserve the fantasy that we can maintain an auto-based life. There’s the direct problem with the policy, but even more that that is the problem with the assumptions and myths that the policy reveals.

Here’s James Howard Kunstler helping explain why it’s so important to think clearly about things–like why biofuel subsidies are such a bad idea when your country is heading into a resource brick wall at high speed (emphasis added):

What all this come’s down to is the sense of a nation absolutely fooling itself that it can carry on in the way it is used to. I’m hardly an advocate of the US giving up and committing suicide. What I advocate is a broad recognition that reality is compelling us to change our behavior. Reality is trying to tell us that we can’t run an economy based on nothing more than investment schemes without directing investment into activities that produce things of value. Reality is telling us to be very worried about living arrangements that can only function with copious imports of oil from people who are disgusted with us. Reality is telling us that we can’t divert our food crops into making motor fuels without people becoming unable to afford either fuel or food. Reality is telling us to redirect our culture more toward things-we-do-with-other- people and less toward things-we-do-with-new- things. Reality is telling us to shift from avoidance behavior and denial to engaging with reality in order to lead lives that are consistent with reality.

The next several weeks are liable to be a time of great stress as these realities become increasingly undeniable. I imagine the public chatter will become increasingly delusional as the wave crests. When it it finally comes, the shock of recognition that we are a bankrupt nation will present itself at first as a great silence. The public’s collective jaw will fall open, but no sound will come out. That will be the true moment of shock and awe.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 5:16 am and is filed under Economy, Energy Future, Environment, Livability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.