Driving force behind ethanol is greed

Joe,

Since you were talking about corn in your essay "A Feral Dog Howls in Harvard Yard", I thought I might tell you about a situation developing here on the great plains. In his book In the Center of the Nation, Dan O'Brian says, "When you get the feeling that the whole world can see you but no one is watching, you have come to the grasslands of North America." I sometimes feel that I am the only one who is watching here anymore (probably the result of spending the 70's working for McGovern, and saving the world). I thought the shit was over, but now it is beyond what any one of us could imagine. But that's another story.

If you look at a railroad map of South Dakota, you will see that it is a branch-line state east of the Missouri. In their race across the country, they were not allowed to cross the Missouri because everything west to the Wyoming and Montana borders was "The Great Sioux Nation". That is until Custer's first trip to the Black Hills in 1874 when gold was discovered. The gold rush ensued, and the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota tribes were driven to the reservations, where they still live, and the railroads went through Nebraska and North Dakota. One rail bed survives and runs into Wyoming, a broken-down old track with a 35 mph speed limit -- at its best stretches.

This track however runs close enough to the Powder River Basin, where open-pit mining is scraping holes in eastern Wyoming. You come from coal country. You have lived in the west. I know that you understand what is happening today.

In the early days of the 20th century, settlers threw up towns over-night to lure the railroads. Today, you can find ghost-towns every nine miles on long stretches of eastern South Dakota counties (that's how far the engines could go before needing fuel and water). Now, the remaining towns are all begging again for the coal trains, 30 per day, to save them. The only sticking point is Rochester, Minnesota. It seems that they don't want 300-car coal-trains going past the front door of the Mayo Clinic.

Now, the third ingredient in this mess is corn. The "fuel" industry has discovered something your kin were brewing in the Blue Ridge mountains before cars were invented. Corn likker, only this time it would be used to run our SUV's, processed at monstrous refining plants, which are sprouting all over the great plains, and the plants would be powered by, you got it, burning dirt from the Powder River Basin.

The driving force behind all of this is greed, of course, sweetened by the lies involving railroad and ethanol plant jobs. This is a right-to-work state, so the jobs would be minimum wage, non-union jobs. The other, and final ingredient again, is corn. You've worked on the land. You know that land has to rest and be treated gently, either with crop rotation or non-use. I'm no agronomist, but every farmer this year is planting every available acre in corn. The dust bowl of the 30's is going to gather itself when the land gives up. But hey, the ethanol people are promising great profit for the crops, which every farmer deserves once in a while.

The thing that makes me want to scream, or cry, is that corn is a FOOD product. Millions of people are starving all over the world, including those who live on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations, past which these coal trains will run.

It's happening right now, Joe. The railroads are being financed, the plants are being built, and everybody is as happy as a hog eatin' shit by moonlight. So what is wrong with me? I'm tired, Joe. If the next generation isn't going to notice, then fuck 'em. I gave mine in the 60's and 70's. I go to Belize every December to re-charge my soul, and to Quebec in February to see snow fall -- vertically.

I have faith sometimes though, Joe, so keep hammering.

Sam