Productivity with little or no damage to our environment, this has been our goal as a nation for many years and some think that scientists may have found the big break through. The new hype about ethanol gas and how it will benefit the issue of global warming has got everyone excited and ready to listen. However not all the issues have been closely broken down. Yes the new gas will reduce the nations reliability on foreign oil resources, and may also help the issue of global warming, but do we really have all the necessary resources to accomplish this. Joe Duggan, writer for the local Journal Star, and several other scientists argue that we do not. The majority of the corn that will be used in the production of this new ethanol will be grown in states like Nebraska and Iowa as well as other agriculturally based states. Therefore the consumption of water for those states will be greatly increased and in all reality, according to Duggan, we don’t have those resources to spare. The state of Nebraska is hard pressed when it comes to the issue of water to begin with but if we have to produce enough corn to help fuel the engines of America on top of feed the hungry mouths that reside in it, we will not only be at a shortage of water but we will begin to use up that limited resource all together. Now this may still be the way to go if we can find a way to use some of the earth’s non-potable water for this use or if we can outweigh the negatives with the positives, but the topic definitely needs to be looked into much more before we as a nation decide to put this huge responsibility on the shoulders of our agricultural economy. After all need to be sure that we are capable of this with the resources that we have before we plunge head first into a dead end. On the other hand if we decide that we do have the resources and we are able to cut our reliance on foreign oil while protecting the environment, then why not make the switch and better both our lives and the lives of future generations to come.
