Among progressives, some of us are for ethanol use, others are agin it. Ken Midkiff of the Missouri Sierra Club, in an op-ed piece that he wrote for the Joplin Globe, lays out the case against it (and, by the way, the case against drilling in ANWR).

He’s convincing. Read on past the Midkiff excerpt to see what McCaskill and Obama have to say on the ethanol question.

Pogo famously said “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

That is where we find ourselves when it comes to the high price per gallon of gasoline (which seems to go up almost daily).

While it is only human to want to blame someone, such as “liberals and environmentalists,” the fact is that we are all to blame. We have used oil and oil products, such as gasoline, as if there was no tomorrow.

Environmental groups and liberals in the U.S. Congress have decried the government largesse flowing to ethanol, which is extolled as a “green solution” by those who view “green” only as the color of money.

As has been pointed out many times, ethanol could not make it in a true free market economy. A corn grower pointed out that right now, ethanol production is subsidized at about 85 cents per gallon. Remove that 85 cents and ethanol plants would be money-losers and would go belly-up.

There are other problems with ethanol:

* Some scientists claim that it takes more energy than it produces. The corn grower I was speaking with told me that, due to more efficiencies in production, the ratio is currently 1:1. In short, it takes a gallon of energy to produce a gallon of energy. That’s hardly worth it.

* If every kernel of corn raised in this country were converted to ethanol, that fuel would meet about 7 percent of our energy demands.

* One unintended consequence of converting so much corn to ethanol is that food prices have skyrocketed to the point that people in developing nations can’t afford groceries and are quite literally starving.

Bottom line: Don’t blame environmentalists or liberals for our tax monies going to support ethanol production.

Those who would blame environmentalists and liberals for our current high gasoline prices are probably thinking of opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve or opposition to drilling on public lands. That’s all true; we are opposed to such. But, the amount of oil in ANWR would meet about 6 months’ worth of demands, and to achieve this modest amount, we would have decimated a relatively pristine area. Maybe ANWR isn’t very inviting to humans; but caribou love it. Caribou and drilling equipment, pipelines and other accouterments of the gas and oil industry don’t get along very well.

Claire’s website:

Claire strongly supports reducing our demand for oil and developing alternative fuels, both to improve our national security and to support Missouri’s farmers. Investing in ethanol is an important first step towards developing renewable fuels. We also need to develop even cleaner, more efficient cellulosic ethanol, which can be produced from biomass. Claire believes in developing local production of feedstocks and fuels and local and farmer ownership of processing plants. Claire will fight to make sure that ethanol production does not end up being controlled by a few big out-of-state corporations and will promote incentives that favor smaller-scale, farmer-owned processing facilities.

Associated Press report about Obama:

Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday the federal government might need to rethink its support for corn ethanol because of rising food prices, a stance similar to Republican John McCain’s but at odds with farm states considered important to the November election.

“What I’ve said is my top priority is making sure people are able to get enough to eat. If it turns out we need to make changes in our ethanol policy to help people get something to eat, that has got to be the step we take,” said Obama, D-Ill., on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Perhaps Claire actually sees Obama’s point by now and just needs to revise her website. Or not. Since the two of them hail from corn producing states, their original support for ethanol subsidies was predictable. Anyway, I’m glad to see Obama shift his stance.