Passage 2 A Growing Disaster
乙醇的使用 《纽约时报》

[00:00]The ethanol industry appears to recognize that without government mandates
[00:07]there can be no sustainable market, hence the push for 15 percent ethanol fuel.
[00:15]But we should be wary on several grounds.
[00:18]First, many researchers are convinced that 15 percent ethanol in gasoline
[00:26]will cause problems in small engines in everything from lawnmowers to portable
[00:32]generators and boats. Some car engines will most likely tolerate
[00:38]the higher blend of ethanol,
[00:41]but others - especially those in older vehicles - will require costly repairs,
[00:48]a hardship likely to be borne by lower-income Americans.
[00:54]Second, if ethanol use was really helping the environment,
[01:00]it might be worth putting up with higher costs.
[01:04]But many environmental groups dropped their support for corn-based ethanol
[01:10]after two studies published by the journal Science last February
[01:16]concluded that ethanol production actually increases the amount of carbon dioxide
[01:23]released into the atmosphere. The main culprit is large-scale conversion of forest
[01:30]and grassland to corn production. Researchers at Princeton University
[01:36]estimate it would take 167 years of ethanol use in cars to offset the release
[01:44]of carbon from converting lands to agricultural production.
[01:50]Third, a 2008 report prepared for the World Bank concluded that
[01:56]"the most important factor" in rising global food prices "was the large increase
[02:03]in biofuels production in the U.S. and the E.U."
[02:08]High food prices may be a hardship for American consumers,
[02:13]but they are downright deadly in poor African nations.
[02:18]Last, Washington already protects American companies with a 54 cent
[02:25]per gallon tariff on sugar cane ethanol from Brazil and other countries that produce it
[02:33]at much lower costs than American farmers can.
[02:37]This tariff not only hits United States motorists in the pocketbook,
[02:43]it also leads to other mischief.
[02:47]An entire industry designed to evade the protectionist tax has cropped up in Trinidad
[02:54]and 23 other Caribbean countries that are exempt from the tariff.
[03:00]Trinidadian companies import sugar cane ethanol from Brazil,
[03:05]dehydrate it to comply with the American tariff exemption on products
[03:11]"substantially transformed" in the Caribbean Basin, and then sell it in America.
[03:18]Allowing a higher percentage of ethanol in gasoline
[03:23]will not make us less dependent on such foreign energy sources.
[03:28]It will not help the environment. It will not lower consumer prices.
[03:34]And it will result in the poor of the world having less to eat.