The Daily Background

John McCain on Ethanol in 1999:

“Ethanol is not worth it. It does not help the consumer. Those ethanol subsidies should be phased out. And everybody here on this stage, if it wasn’t for the fact that Iowa is the first caucus state, would share my view that we don’t need ethanol subsidies. It doesn’t help anybody.”

John McCain on Ethanol in 2007:

“When oil is $10 a barrel, ethanol doesn’t make much sense economically. When oil is $40, $50, $60 a barrel it makes a lot of sense. And I believe what’s happening has already been done in the country of Brazil where they basically shifted their entire automobile fleet to E85 price of fuel. I’m not sure we can achieve that but certainly ethanol’s going to play a major role in the energy independence.”

[Source]

Just a quick side note: did the 1999 version of John McCain think that energy subsidies are bad all together, or did he just think that energy subsidies for clean alternative fuels were bad? Because the gasoline industry is probably the most heavily-subsidized industry of all here in the United States– that’s why we don’t have pay 8 bucks a gallon for gas like they do in Europe.

Filed under: Environment Related, Z-TDB Blog