Annotated Bibliography

“Corn lobby’s tall tale of a gas substitute.” Christian Science Monitor 12 May 2006.

This article addresses some of the benefits and downsides associated with using ethanol as an alternative fuel to gasoline. The newspaper Christian Science Monitor is published by The First Church of Christ, Science out of Boston, MA. It does not rely on wire articles but has writers located around the globe. Some of the information in this article is very helpful in writing my papers. I learned from this text that very little net energy is produced from making ethanol from corn. It also doesn’t help that in order to make the ethanol from corn, the processing companies use natural gas or coal to power the plants. Using coal counterbalances the greenhouse gains of using ethanol.

Dean, Cornelia. “Panel Sees Problems in Ethanol Production” The New York Times 11 Oct. 2007: A24.

Dean wrote this piece for The New York Times which is a very respectable daily newspaper. This article addresses some problems that may occur if we continue to produce ethanol at a faster rate. Dean gives information from a panel headed by the National Research Council that shows how producing ethanol would inhibit and possibly even pollute our water supplies. I am going to use this article to show that by increasing our corn production for ethanol, we are hurting our water supply.

Evans, David. “Race is on for ‘green gold’ of tomorrow; High oil prices have propelled biofuels into the global mainstream.” Birmingham Post 19 June 2006: Business 32.

In this article Evans presents sources of alternative fuels to the reader and focuses mostly on ethanol. He gives examples of how Brazil has developed a very efficient way to produce ethanol. Biodiesel is also mentioned in this article, including where it is manufactured and what it is produced from. I will use this article as a source to show how to produce ethanol efficiently and what the United States could learn from Brazil.

Gritzinger, Bob. “Flex Fuel for the Future; Is E85 the next unleaded or a pipe dream?” AutoWeek 24 Apr. 2006: 18.

The article focuses mainly on where actual ethanol pumps can be found in the country and what benefits we get out of using ethanol. The article was published in AutoWeek which is a very respectable automotive magazine published weekly. Gritzinger also points out that even though E85 costs about the same as gasoline; it gets 15 percent less miles per gallon. This source will help me in showing that most of the places to get E85 are in the rural parts of the Midwest and cannot be found in major cities across the country.

Lynch, David J. “Brazil hopes to build on its ethanol success; Nation aims to turn alternative fuel into a global commodity.” USA Today 29 Mar. 2006: B1.

Lynch introduces the fact that Brazil is now energy independent. The article focuses on Brazil’s production of ethanol fuel and how they plan on exporting more and more as the need for alternative fuels become more demanding to other countries. This in part is due to the fact that they are able to produce more sugar cane in order to produce more ethanol. The article was on the cover page of the money section of USA Today. This shows that it was a very hot topic at the time, and still is. USA Today is a source of news for all different aspects of life; it is a national newspaper. This article will be useful to me because it helps to show how a country can produce ethanol efficiently. It will also give me a resource for my policy paper.

“NPRA’s Slaughter: ‘Biofuels are not the answer’.” Oil and Gas Journal 13 Nov. 2006: 29.

This article is a summary of the views of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association’s president, Bob Slaughter, on America’s use and production of E85 ethanol fuel. Some of the quotes in this article by Slaughter are very relevant to my topic and I will use them in both of my essays to help back up my issue.

Potera, Carol. “Alternative Fuels: The Economics of Ethanol” Environmental Health Perspectives 1 (2002): A18.

Potera uses two different studies to write this article. She introduces different reasons as to why America shouldn’t focus on converting to using ethanol instead of gasoline to power cars. Some of these reasons include what the effects will be if we continue to grow more corn in order to produce ethanol. This article will be very helpful to me to show how the environment will be impacted by producing more E85 ethanol fuel.

Samuelson, Robert J. “The Upside of Recession?” Newsweek Web Exclusive 30 Apr. 2007. 15 Oct. 2007 .

Samuelson’s article is mainly about inflation and recession in today’s world. A few of the paragraphs have to deal with rising food prices. He attributes this rise to the production of ethanol in America and the use of corn for ethanol. This article is important to my essays because it helps show how using corn to produce ethanol has affected food prices and the production of meat and poultry.