Ethanol Industry Fights Back

What are some of the things you’ve heard said about ethanol? That using it will damage your car’s engine? That making more ethanol will make gas prices go up? How about that the ethanol industry is using up U.S. corn crops - causing food prices to increase? The ethanol industry has decided to fight back against what it deems a slander campaign against ethanol by ‘Big Oil’ with an advertising campaign of their own called “You’re No Dummy”. Growth Energy, an ethanol advocacy group, which includes supporters and producers of ethanol, says its campaign will “help Americans better understand that the oil industry is trying to stop the growth of clean, green renewable fuels to protect their own bottom lines”. The advertising campaign, running on major cable news networks, in print and on radio, features an oil industry’s “Mr. Slick” ventriloquist, whose dummy starts talking on his own, taking apart some of Big Oil’s arguments against renewable fuels. This battle revolves around the Renewable Fuel Standard, an eight-year-old law that requires refiners to buy alternative fuels made from corn, soybeans and other products to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign energy. A law that many oil groups want changed or ended all together.