Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
Ethanol doesn't take food out of the mouths of people so much as beef cattle.
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I'll do you one better; any money not spent on producing food is taking food out of the mouths of people.
When I am faced with the choice of buying an iPhone, or feeding a person in a third-world for a year, my decision will have an opportunity cost.
Spending resources on ethanol for fuel is no more upsetting than spending resources on livestock. We all have options on how to appropriate funds, and our "vote" is cast with those dollars.
The only travesty is that subsidies distort the true cost of things while making politicians and a select minority of people (businesses) wealthy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
The only other purpose I can see is intentionally monkey-wrenching the biosphere.
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Intentionally monkey-wrenching the biosphere sounds more interesting than the millions of years of unintentional monkey-wrenching that has already occurred. Genetic engineering has been going on for ages, and only in the last micro-second of the existence of the universe are we intentionally shaping biology.
Like it or not, the future is genetically engineered everything. In general, we will all be better off for it, but no doubt there will be some negative outcomes as well.