Tom Friedman and Brazil
The former draws the wrong lessons from the latter
The Mustache of Understanding brings us another variant of the Brazil is awesome! story, and commits the standard two errors:
- He conflates corn-based and cellulosic ethanol, failing to note that Brazil uses the latter and we the former.
- He makes no mention of the fact that Brazil’s per-capita energy use is about an eighth of ours (1,064 vs. 7,921 kgoe per-person-per-year, as of 2001).
These facts are relevant to an assessment of Brazil’s success with biofuels, no?
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