Drunk Dialing: Wiretaps and Cellulosic Ethanol
If I were given the assignment of saying one negative and one positive thing about the President’s State of the Union address last night, this is what I would offer…
Negative:
Yesterday I wrote a FAQ explaining the illegal wiretapping point-by-point. And yesterday, Bush repeated the same disproven points again:
It is said that prior to the attacks of September the 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack — based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute — I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous Presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have, and federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed. The terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.
Of course, we already know that the terrorist program hasn’t actually helped prevent any attacks, and that there’s really no reason to perform the surveillance illegally. Further, we know that Bush’s definition of “appropriate members of Congress” is quite limited, and that some of those members have objected. We also know that federal courts have not approved the authority that Bush is invoking. This doesn’t matter to the President, however. He’s interested in saying whatever he has to say to be able to do as he pleases– whether or not it’s honest and accurate.
Positive:
This is the challenging part.I can’t endorse anything he said without reservation, and usually I wish he had said or promised more. However, one program he mentioned caught my attention and is worthy of note:
We’ll also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.
Yes, it’s only a research goal, and it may disappear as other promised programs did, but ethanol production from switch grass would be a major plus. Despite Alexander Farrell’s recent work arguing that corn-based ethanol production is in fact energy-positive, I still have serious reservations about the technology. These reservations stem primarily from the fact that Farrell’s logic regarding credits for byproducts assumes that each additional unit of a byproduct will displace one unit of production elsewhere, and that even with these credits included, the process is barely energy-positive. Ethanol from switch grass and other plants with high cellulose content can be produced much more efficiently than ethanol from corn, making ethanol a viable energy source, as opposed to a mere transport medium for energy. Ethanol certainly has other disadvantages, but no energy source is perfect. So for this move, however small it may be, I applaud the President.