Chapter 8 Question 6.

A passage that stood out to me (and possibly the person who owned this book before me because a bit of it was underlined) was when it said that government taxed ethanol 5.4 cents less per gallon than gas, even though, through researched has shown that it may not be so much greater than gasoline. On the plus side for the american economy, it lowers dependence on our use of foreign oils, but it still hurts mother nature. It evaporates faster than gasoline, so it still contributes to damaging the ozone, however after another study was done, ethanol did reduce greenhouse gas emission by 12% relative to gasoline. Still, even with if all the corn crop of america was used to go towards ethanol, it would still be only a fraction, and expanding that farm land would cause even more damage to mother nature because of pesticides and chemical run off and residues.  This passage stuck out to me because it seems like every single thing is connected. This goes back to negative externalities. I also didn't understand then why would there be a tax break on a product like this which the subsidy have cost $7.1 billion to. Imagine, if there wasn't a tax break how much money could be made to go to other causes like research in finding another way to produce energy for transportation that doesn't kill the earth. Or go into public transportation so not as many people drive.