Ethanol is a great way to produce fuel, great fuel to trade and It makes sense to grow your fuel. Only a few problems; it takes water, processing makes CO2 and how much can we get for it when we export it? Ethanol Plants are popping up across America and turn corn into fuel, but corn takes water to grow and states like Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri are in drought. So if you take the water to grow corn and to process (which also takes water) to make fuel and in the process release CO2 then where are you really in terms of saving from pollution? Where are you in the over costs if you trade it to other countries? If other countries want the ethanol and it is an export crop then, we end up leaving the CO2 for us to breath and the water bill here to? This is the cause and affect of linear thinking in theories of trade. Additionally there is an issue that currently Ethanol is subsidized by tax payers, eventually as technology gets better that will no longer be the case. North Korea has trading partners; Japan for fishing lures and supplies. Its exports are minerals, metallurgical products, manufactures (including armaments); agricultural and fishery products. And it imports petroleum, coking coal, machinery and equipment; consumer goods, grain. In times of non-drought it ought to be exporting Ethanol processed there made from corn with the Bt. Gene (super-corn GM), not plutonium for nuclear weapons. Think about this. |
