Ethanol and Iowa

2005-2023 | 18 years

This episode is mainly focused on the topic of Ethanol, a fuel that in the US is made from corn. In the episode, Democratic candidates Bob Russell and Matt Santos and Republican candidate Arnold Vinick are all in Iowa, and In the end, Russell and Santos “make the pledge” and support Ethanol despite the fact that they don’t believe that Ethanol is good for the economy or the environment, pandering to the Iowans for votes.

In the past 24 hours, the issue of Ethanol has entered the news cycle. Republicans planned to vote to raise the debt ceiling in return for Democrats rolling back some of their clean energy tax credits, but lawmakers from mid-western states, such as Iowa, which have large corn industries, have objected because this would also cause the rolling back of subsidies for corn-based biofuels, like ethanol.

Ethanol doesn’t come up often in our news cycle, but as this episode illustrates, it is a decisive issue. The Iowa caucuses are the first Presidential Primaries, so it is very important that contenders do well in Iowa. 90% of the state’s land is used for agriculture, and it is the country’s largest producer of corn. Corn is the most heavily subsidized crop in the country, and 45% of corn is used for Ethanol. So states, such as Iowa, with large investments in corn are also very invested in Ethanol. This is why there is so much talk during the Iowa caucus about “taking the pledge”. Presidential contenders, if they want to do well in the state and have enough momentum to continue through the primaries, have to pander to Iowa by supporting Ethanol as a clean energy alternative.

The problem is, that according to science, it's not. Although Ethanol burns clean, producing the corn and then refining it creates more emissions than would using gasoline in the first place. So while some, like the Iowa Farm Bureau, for instance, claim “ethanol is actually quite good for the environment (much better than regular gasoline)”, studies have in fact found that ethanol is a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline.

Ethanol truly has massive effects on the real politics of our country. In 2008 Hillary Clinton flipped on Ethanol from her stance against it as a New York Senator, which then-Senator Obama used to his advantage, saying she could not be trusted, with him winning the caucus while Clinton dropped to third. That same year, Arizona Senator John McCain, like Vinick, did not let go of his anti-ethanol stance, losing the Iowa primary and the state in the General election.

Ethanol not only affects presidential races but also holds major sway in Congress. Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota bring a total of 12 Senators guaranteed to support Ethanol policies, with the possibility of 6 more from Missouri, Minnesota, and Indiana, making up a total of 18% of the Senate.

It would be great to have a new renewable fuel that could help us be energy independent while curbing climate change and helping to support American economies all at the same time. But as the episode expresses, the industry demands billions of dollars a year for what is essentially a gas additive, which in the end is worse for the environment than the alternative, and even if we wanted to, we couldn’t produce enough ethanol to substitute for the country’s gasoline intake anyways.