BRAZIL – THAT MUCH SMARTER THAN AMERICA?

BRAZIL – THAT MUCH SMARTER THAN AMERICA?
Since 1975 Brazil A+ and America F.

Why is Brazil so much smarter than America ?? The robustly intelligent who frequent KOS will be instantly curious and want to at least explore this premise.

Brazil is one of the largest Democracies in the world. It operates the same way as the United States, as a republic. Brazil’s 190 million residents now enjoy the very comfortable position of being OPEC-Free, or energy-independent. (Notice how US politicians mouth that phrase as a distant, unachievable dream … ?) Brazilians couldn’t care less what the Saudi Sheiks do with their oil production decisions: increase drilling or decrease? Brazilians don’t care. Imported oil previously accounted for more than 70% of the country's oil needs, but Brazil became energy independent in 2006.

It has been simultaneously humorous and shocking to see the difference in maturity in Brazilian officialdom since 1973 and their counterparts in the United States. The noun is used here to include the Government and the very progressive, mature and long-term- disposed companies in Brazil. Those forward-thinking people stared an enormous crisis in the face, realized what had to be done, weathered the storm and have been working to get free of any repeat of it ever since then. The crisis was of course the OPEC-generated oil crisis in 1973. You remember. You had to cue up in a line at gas stations, and after sometimes a 30-minute or longer wait, “inched” your way forward, only to see a hand-painted sign reading NO MORE GAS when you finally got there. Remember?

Everyone in Sao Paulo and Rio and all Brazilian cities had to do the same thing. So herein a stark distinction between the actions of two vastly different societies in the aftermath of those difficult days. I’ll leave it to the Psychological community to explain the goals of the two countries based on their actions in this crisis. One thing is certain: decision makers in the two countries showed vastly different concern for the populace, and vastly different priorities.

BRAZIL – one of the largest democracies in the world
USA - one of the largest democracies in the world

BRAZIL – In 1973, faced with worldwide oil deficits
USA - In 1973, faced with worldwide oil deficits

BRAZIL - Immediately began its ethanol program for automobiles
USA - Ignored all suggestions for ethanol…OPEC’s biggest customer

BRAZIL - First produced ethanol from sugarcane
USA - First produced ethanol from corn

BRAZIL - There is no shortage of sugar. Food-versus-fuel is not a discussion
USA - Big concerns, political protests that food for fuel threatens food supply

BRAZIL - The Brazilian government provided three important initial drivers for the ethanol industry to be born alive:
· guaranteed purchases by the state-owned oil company Petrobras,
· low-interest loans for agro-industrial ethanol firms
· fixed gasoline and ethanol prices where hydrous ethanol sold for 59% of the government-set gasoline price at the pump.
· these pump-primers made ethanol competitive yet unsubsidized
USA - Smears of “socialism” prevented any of this in the USA.

BRAZIL – Enjoying record sugar crops, and record production of Ethanol from sugar, which is 8 times more energy efficient to produce than ethanol derived from corn
USA - Continues to produce ethanol from corn, which produces much less ethanol per acre than sugar does, cuts into food supplies, & does not reduce greenhouse gases

BRAZIL - The ethanol program provided nearly 700,000 jobs in 2003
USA - No record of any job production from corn ethanol

BRAZIL - is the world's largest exporter of ethanol and is considered to have the world's first sustainable biofuels economy. Is the biofuel industry leader.
USA - - Still a halting, argument-ridden exercise in America

BRAZIL - Continuous research and testing being done to improve ethanol. Approximately $50 million has recently been allocated for research and projects focused on advancing ethanol from sugarcane in São Paulo.[18]
USA - Many American scientists engaged in the study of how to make rifle bullets “more lethal.” Goal is how to enter the human body, then explode horizontally. (From The Military Channel on Satellite.)

BRAZIL - Continues to offer ethanol study and technology to the world
USA - Continues to block Brazilian ethanol while boosting production of ethanol made from corn

BRAZIL - Offers ethanol to all countries, at rates less than gasoline or oil, and especially free of OPEC control.
USA - A 54 cent-per-gallon tax blocks most Brazilian ethanol from reaching U.S. consumers. (Have you scolded your Senator about this yet? Vote him/her out !)

Getting rid of such tariffs, Brazilian producers agree, would give the world what it needs - cheap, clean and environmentally friendly alternative fuel. Ending the tax would ignite Brazil's ethanol industry and turn the country into a major biofuel exporter, said Jose Goldemberg, one of the founders of Brazil's national ethanol program.

"It doesn't make much sense to produce ethanol from corn," Goldemberg said. "What the United States needs to do if it wants to solve its energy problems is very simple. It needs to import ethanol from Brazil."

BRAZIL - Now produces millions of cars, most enjoying 40+ miles per gallon
USA - “There is an untapped oil field in America, in Detroit,” says Amy Jaffe, Director of Energy Independence. “Just one mile per gallon improvement in its cars would yield 350,000 barrels a day for use.”

BRAZIL - 30-year old ethanol fuel program uses modern equipment and cheap sugar cane as feedstock. Brazilian research has utilized the waste products of the cane to process heat and power, which results in not only a very competitive price, but a high energy balance - which is math talk for saying that as a result, sugar-cane ethanol produces 8 units of energy for every 1 unit of fossil fuels invested in its production, while the ratio for the stubborn US corn ethanol is 1.3 to 1. (Brazil A+ - America F)

USA - During this same period, the USA produces the “bunker-buster bomb,” a new take on bombs – it penetrates the ground 30 feet before exploding, and development costs were said to come in “under budget:” - $30 million dollars.

USA - US critics have made the most noise about the possible effects of ethanol production on Brazil's fragile rainforests and other ecosystems, criticisms that Brazilian producers call absurd.
BRAZIL - "Sugar is not growing in the forest," said Marcos Jank, president of the country's biggest sugar industry group UNICA. "You don't destroy forest to grow sugar. You actually produce a carbon credit and not a carbon deficit."

Okay, okay. Enough already. I just thought it might be interesting to draw a distinction between the United States of George W Bush and a relatively undistinguished country in South America. Personally, a slavish devotion to OPEC and the very real burden of $4 a gallon gasoline, soon to be $5, soon to be $6, and the transparent reasons the corporate talking heads give for those outrages is wearing really thin. Supply and demand has absolutely nothing to do with these prices. But “identify the problem and solve it” most assuredly does. Brazil is a nation of identifiers and solvers, apparently, not “deciders.”

Does Dick Cheney really expect us to believe him, that the laws of supply and demand simply don’t apply to Brazil?

I really wanted to write a blog to inform, like the thing I did on The Patriot Act, but in doing so, a grim realization hit me. It would be simple for the oilmen in the White House to solve America’s gasoline problem. They could just have Fox news repeat a million times a day that Brazil is working on the final stages of a nuclear weapon. If they can produce fuel from sugar cane, the world is confident they can enrich uranium. Then he could invade Brazil, smash the buildings and the people, but leave the sugar cane fields intact, and voila’ – plenty of fuel. Look how well that has worked in Iraq.

Ramping up US ethanol production from sugar cane would take us a considerable amount of time, granted, to get it off the ground and operating. But there is a way we can have very inexpensive ethanol from Brazil in a heartbeat: install some real people in Washington, ignore the pressure from the oil companies lobby, and remove the 54c a gallon tax on ethanol from Brazil.

But, of course, that won’t happen, will it ?

You wanta read one of the nicest sentences I came across in researching Brazil? How good is this one:

Brazilian foreign policy has generally reflected multilateralism, peaceful dispute settlement, and nonintervention in the affairs of other countries.”

Faithfully, in the interests of the American People
See also daily kos.
swungnotes at blogspot.com