For Thee but Not for Me: Ethanol, Brazil, and the U.S.

There's a fascinating article in the NY Times this week about Bush's upcoming visit to Brazil next week (stay tuned for more next week). The reason for his visit is "to promote the production and use of ethanol throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, according to administration officials." Despite what some may see as the good efforts of the administration, however, there are some extremely frustrating aspects to this visit and the agreement.

Certainly, the U.S. isn't lacking in its production of ethanol (as the article points out, 70% of global ethanol production comes from Brazil and the U.S.). However, the U.S. has yet to take the measures that Brazil has to make the auto and other industries more efficient and responsible in their use of ethanol and more available for public consumption (how many people have ethanol-fueled cars in the U.S.?). The language of the Bush officials and of the article itself is very specific: they want to promote broader use of ethanol in the hemisphere, but without any specific mention of the U.S. The overall tone is that the U.S. wants to increase other countries' use of ethanol without ever really addressing its own, and it's hard to tell other countries how they should use their fuel when we have done such a poor job in our employment of alternate fuels in the U.S. As for the protectionism issues that some politicians are raising in the cheaper cost of ethanol from sugar (the Brazilian model) than corn (the American model), I suspect their worries are a bit hollow, as people within the ethanol industry in the U.S. are not yet worried. As for their goal to spread this technology to other poor countries, I'm....leery. Maybe the U.S. has good intentions that will actually help countries in the Americas, but given the results of the U.S. government's past "good intentions" (see: Guatemala in 1954, Nicaragua from 1930-1990, Brazil in 1964, Chile in 1973, Argentina in 1976, the Dominican Republic throughout the 20th century, Haiti, El Salvador, etc.), I'm skeptical, to put it lightly.

If anybody is going to win from this, it is going to be Brazil. Brazil is already a global leader in alternative fuels in the world, having ethanol and alcohol options at nearly all gas stations, with alternate-energy cars readily available on the market. The article is correct in portraying Brazil as one of the leaders of this alternate fuel market, and their position right now has them poised to be an even more important world player as oil reserves decrease and people the world over look for alternative solutions.

I suppose that at this point any attention to alternative fuels from this administration at this point is an improvement (after all, Bush is the guy who, a few years ago at a gas station in Virginia, said to reporters that he wanted to reeduce our dependence on "fossil fuels" and move more towards energy like....coal - does anybody know where I could find the video clip of that?). However, it's so frustrating that we can have a president who can basically come down here, sign an agreement that proposes other countries gain the technology to create alternate fuels, tehreby decreasing their dependency on gas, while the administration sits idly by and does virtually nothing to try to legitimately increase our own use of alternative fuels.