Bush says he's "guilty" of promoting ethanol and said he wants to move to "cellulostic" ethanol. The White House transcripts actually includes Bush's mispronunciation of the word. Here is the full quote:
"Q Mr. President, I'm a third-generation dairy farmer. We milk 300 cows out west of town. And we're very concerned with immigration and ag jobs, and also the economic impact that the ethanol -- the government subsidy on ethanol production has had on feed costs. And agriculture is still number one in Arkansas, even with all this fantastic economic growth that we've got in this area. Could you please comment, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. I will. First of all, I'm guilty on promoting ethanol. And the reason is, is because I think it's in our interests to diversify away from oil. And the reason why it's -- I know that's hard for a Texan to say. But the reason why we've got to diversify away from oil is that we end up with dependency on oil from certain parts of the world where people don't particularly like us. And secondly, given the globalization of the world today, and disruption of oil, you know, in one part of the world is going to cause the price of your gasoline to go up. And so, I promoted ethanol, and still believe it's important for the future.
I'm also promoting research that will enable us to make ethanol out of something other than corn, because I fully understand the constraints on corn. I mean, I hear it everywhere I go that the people like yourself who rely upon reasonable feed prices know full well that demand for corn as a result of the demand for ethanol going up is costing your -- making it harder for you to make a living. One of these days we're going to be able to make ethanol out of wood chips or switchgrass. It's called cellulostic [sic] ethanol. And we're spending a lot of money to develop the technologies that will enable us to use something other than corn."
I hope the administrations staff read my blog for viable ethanol answers ;-)
