Do you prefer drilling for oil over ethanol? it isn't overproduction if it is being utilized for livestock or fuel. Nobody (besides maybe Jeremey Clarkson) is out there farming for fun.
This comes off as a rhetorical question, but to me it's not obvious that burning ethanol derived from corn supported by fertilizer made from fossil fuels is less detrimental for the environment than burning fossil fuels directly. I expect there are many sets of criteria that make one or the other worse.
At least, the efficiency of ethanol vs gasoline seems to be a controversial topic, as I can find lots of studies and opinion pieces favoring each position. If anyone could help shed some light I'd appreciate it.
Ethanol contains only about 67% of the available energy of gasoline on a gallon-gallon basis [0]. So mixing ethanol gasoline into gasoline will result in a noticeable loss of mile-per-gallon efficiency.
Agree that both are effectively releasing CO2 from either deep in the earth or from the soil, so replacing them with solar power generation on the fields would be a net plus, and probably a greater energy density. We could also use the new-ish practice of installing vertical solar panels between tractor rows of crops, which doesn't reduce the solar yield too much and allows both 'crops' to yield something.
That said, returning a lot to natural ecosystem may be necessary to our survival.
This comes off as a rhetorical question, but to me it's not obvious that burning ethanol derived from corn supported by fertilizer made from fossil fuels is less detrimental for the environment than burning fossil fuels directly. I expect there are many sets of criteria that make one or the other worse.
At least, the efficiency of ethanol vs gasoline seems to be a controversial topic, as I can find lots of studies and opinion pieces favoring each position. If anyone could help shed some light I'd appreciate it.