Planet Gore has had a revealing debate with Energy Victory author and Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Robert Zubrin over the past couple of weeks. It began with my post responding to Cliff May’s column of January 31, which extolled the environmental, economic, humanitarian, and national-security benefits of a flex-fuel mandate — a column written on the basis of Zubrin’s book.
Today, Robert Zubrin has an NRO article up that reiterates the case for all the good a congressional flex-fuel mandate would do: for our national security, for our economy, and for the economies of poorer (non-OPEC) nations. Planet Gore readers will recognize the arguments — but, unfortunately, most of the counterarguments Planet Gore contributors lodged against his idea go unremarked in this latest iteration.
Case in point: in a post on February 7, Zubrin testily argued that “If alcohol fuels really can’t compete, let that be proven in an open market, not by OPEC fans writing polemics discounting the possibility.” In response, Planet Gore contributor Henry Payne laid out the monitory lesson of Brazil’s state-directed embrace of ethanol — a history that powerfully indicates that ethanol (even cane-sugar ethanol, the best of the bunch) can’t really compete.
Zubrin has not engaged that argument. One is tempted to respond, “If alcohol fuels really can compete, let that be proven in an open market, not by flex-fuel fans writing panegyrics discounting all existing evidence.”
Still, Zubrin’s piece today provides another opportunity to continue this important debate. If you want to weigh in on the pros and cons of a flex-fuel mandate, e-mail Planet Gore here.
I am not unsympathetic with the national-security argument that Zubrin poses — and that Robert MacFarlane touched on recently in the Wall Street Journal. After all, Venezuela’s socialist strongman Hugo Chavez is using seized U.S. infrastructure assets and CITGO oil profits to cement ties with FARC rebels and drug lords in Colombia, to build an anti-American alliance in Latin America and the Caribbean, and has threatened the U.S. with $200 per barrel oil — or an outright embargo.
That said, for an FFV mandate to work, Americans would have to want to buy flex fuels for their automobiles. What’s it going to cost to make that happen?