| Road Trippin' Through The Corn Belt |
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| Written by Samantha Hulkower | |
| Monday, 11 August 2008 | |
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EnviroWonk writer Samantha Hulkower road-tripped from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles last week. For those of you anxiously anticipating our cross country postings, pardon the delay -- we underestimated how much time we'd have. But never fear, we took copious notes and are ready to fill you in. If you haven't had the opportunity to drive on I-70 through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas, we can describe it for you in 2 words: corn fields. As we haven't been through that area before, we don't know if this has been inspired by the corn ethanol craze, or has always been there, but damn, America grows a lot of corn. We only noticed on biodiesel fueling station, in Missouri, which is odd considering we were traveling through one of the densest regions of biofuel gas stations in the country. Residents of Summit County in western Colorado have made up for their state's lack of corn resources by partnering with local eateries to send their cooking oil to a biodiesel refinery, so that local businesses can use it in their trucks. While the rest of the nation is looking for ways to grow, rather than drill, their way out of high gas prices, the presidential candidates aren't necessarily on the same page. McCain doesn't even mention the prefix "bio" in his description of his Lexington Project. Obama does spend time discussing not only "the next generation of biofuels " which we hope means not from corn, but also developing the infrastructure to get it into people's cars, always an important concept. Comments (13)
  written by Samantha, August 14, 2008
Thanks for the well wishes Benjamin.
The only thing I couldn't understand is if all the corn is for ethanol why I didn't see more signs for E85 gas stations. Do people actually put that stuff in their gas tank out there? written by Benjamin Jones, August 14, 2008
Most of the stations run e10, which still consumes massic amounts of corn. In the town near me, perhaps 50% of the stations had e85 (versus none that I've ever seen before), so it's definitely more than elsewhere, I think it just takes a whole lot of corn to make a small percentage of the huge amount of fuel people use.
written by Susan, August 17, 2008
I have grown up in Indiana, and I have to say. The corn fields have definitely always been here.
written by Susan VanderJeugdt, August 29, 2008
As a former Iowan, I miss the flat landscape of corn and such along I80. As for ethanol, I was filling my tank with e10 over 20 years ago because it was readily available and cheaper! As a college student, the OPEC oil embargo was still fresh in my mind and ethanol seemed like a no brainer fix. No one really talked about the implications of using food for fuel back then.
written by Susan VanderJeugdt, August 29, 2008
One more thing--on my last trip back to the midwest I was thrilled to spy a wind farm in Illinois. Here in North Carolina, it seems that the mention of wind farms off the coast of the Outerbanks sends residents into apoplectic fits, although offshore drilling in the same area is encouraged by our US Senators and Reps-- "Those radical environmentalists won't let us use our own oil."
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Yeah, OK, we can be the change that we want to see in the world. But unless powerful people in powerful positions want to be that change as well, nothing's going to change.
So now, finally, there's a place where you can go for news and analysis of politics from an environmental perspective.
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Anyway, good luck with the trip.