Unintended Consequences

“Don’t just stand there. DO SOMETHING!” Say that to a legislator and you’ll get action. It will make everyone feel better, because once enacted the problem will be solved and the issue will go away. Won’t it? Actually the problem will usually get worse. That’s the impact of unintended consequences.

I remember the oil shortages and dire predictions of 1975. Suddenly the pundits were calculating that the world would be out of oil by the year 2000. We needed to “do something.” What we did has apparently had very little impact on the problem. The doom-and-gloom crowd was proven wrong, the efforts to reduce our consumption were largely ineffective and now we’re well past the end year. We’ve still got plenty of oil and a lot more consumers of it as the economies of China, India and other regions are booming.

We steadfastly refuse to harvest our own petroleum reserves and the enviro-whackos won’t allow refineries to be built in this country. They scream about reducing our dependence upon foreign oil and the latest solution is ethanol. Why, it’s perfect. It’s renewable, so we can simply grow another crop of corn to fuel our cars for the coming year. It’s compatible with the internal combustion engine, so we see the Indy Car Racing League running their exotics exclusively on ethanol. And, we don’t need those nasty old despots of OPEC telling us what the price of oil will be for our lifestyle. What’s not to like?

Oh, sure, we know that ethanol doesn’t have quite the energy bang for the buck that gasoline does. We’ll get a little less horsepower and a little bit poorer gas mileage. We can pay that price willingly. Oh, and it will cost us a little bit more per gallon because of production and shipment costs. That’s a bargain if it will save the environment, isn’t it?

And, by the way, the tanks for the ethanol will have to be specialized and the old gasoline refineries will need some upgrading and the engines of your cars will have to be modified a little bit to burn more than a small percentage of ethanol. There will be costs, but think of the benefits.

Now, we’re learning more about the issue. The first hint after the applause of the Iowa, Illinois and Indiana corn farmers died down was the clamor coming from south of the border as the population of Mexico suddenly discovered that there was a corn shortage for their dietary staples. Yep, it may be renewable but it isn’t infinite in supply. Use corn here and it isn’t available there.

But, this year we see something else. Not only tortillas are more expensive, but corn-on-the-cob for our summer picnics is a bit pricier. And, that steak dinner is costing significantly more as well as our legislators learn that beef eats corn on the way to the table. Lots of food costs are higher because of the ethanol demand.

When we add it all up, we find that we get less efficient energy, much higher production and shipping costs, a huge boost to food costs, and an unquantifiable impact on our foreign energy dependence. In the long run we’ll see land depletion as farmers attempt to meet the artificially induced demand for corn. Whether the impact on the environment from the consumption and production of ethanol will be plus or minus for the long term, it is becoming increasingly clear that the costs are well above those estimated at the onset. Clearly the consequences have been unintended.

Later That Same Day