Last stage of denial: ethanol will save us!

By Murray Dobbin
TheTyee.ca
April 4, 2007

Citizens in industrialized societies, including Canada, will cling to their extravagant lifestyles and massive over-consumption for a while yet, it seems. Global climate change is still seen by most people — even those who have no doubt of its human origins — as something that can be fixed by legislation, tougher rules and punitive penalties on big polluters — and that allegedly clean and green quick fix, ethanol.

Yes, we can all keep our individual chunks of steel, rubber and glass, those symbols of 20th century excess and irrationality, so long as we shift to burning alcohol.

This particular mass delusion was madness enough to inspire the still-ailing Fidel Castro out of his bed to write the first editorial he has written for the country’s principal newspaper, Granma, since last falling ill last July. It’s not as if there is a lack of issues for the grand old commander-in-chief to comment on. But this one he deemed the most important. Why?

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