Editor, The Times:
As usual, Jim Lamberton was bang on about a global carbon tax being stupid and a moratorium on golf courses being good, but boy did he miss the boat on using corn as an alternative fuel.
A lot of misinformed people think corn must be good, I mean it comes from a vegetable so it must be good. Right? The only reason corn is being considered as an alternative fuel is that 'Corn is King' now, just as 'Cotton was King' for the South during the American Civil War. The corn industry has just as many lobbyists in Washington as the oil industry does. Corn and corn by-products are in almost about everything we eat including breads, cereals, lunchmeats, soups and more, just read the labels. If you see citric acid as an ingredient you would think it comes from a lemon, or an orange, but it probably comes from corn. Corn syrup is in all kinds of foods, but it's called by so many different names that we don't really know it's there, glucose-fructose, modified glucose, natural sweetener, modified corn syrup, etc, etc. The U.S. subsidizes corn and has an import tariff on foreign sugar making high fructose corn syrup less costly than other sweeteners. Corn and corn byproducts are fed to animals and then we eat the animals; there is big money in that.
Using corn as an alternative fuel makes absolutely no sense. It is more costly to convert corn into fuel than oil, producing it leaves a larger carbon imprint than oil and if there really is a world shortage of food (which there isn't) and people world-wide are starving to death (which they are) than why use food to run our cars? Because the corn industry is huge and all they care about is making money for their stockholders.
Jim, old stick, you're usually bang on with your thinking, but this time you really missed the boat. If you want to stop by I can loan you some books like The Future of Food, Fast Food Nation, An Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Inc., etc. to get you up to speed on this subject.
Patrick Stanley
Clearwater, B.C.