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The next time you have to take out a loan just to fill up your tank, remember this: Four-dollar-per-gallon gasoline is cheap.

The ethanol apologists refuse to face the facts. Soaring demand from the ethanol sector has helped push prices for all grains dramatically higher.

When it comes to economic growth, the vital commodity is always electricity. Peter Huber and Mark Mills, in their outstanding 2005 book about energy, The Bottomless Well, made this point clear, declaring, “Economic growth marches hand in hand with increased consumption of electricity — always, everywhere, without significant exception in the annals of modern industrial history.”

It is now beyond dispute that congressional mandates on ethanol use are having a number of deleterious effects, soaring food prices chief among them.

Batteries are the silver bullet.  There’s no question that electricity is the key development factor in countries around the world. Countries that have cheap, abundant electric power have healthier economies than those that don’t.

Robert Hart has for many years worked to develop electric power projects in emerging nations. As CEO of Coastal Power from 1994 to 1999, he was at the forefront of the global surge of private investment in emerging market power, pioneering the first privately owned and operated power plants in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

The outrages of the ethanol mandates are growing by the day. Last week, a study funded by American beef, pork and chicken producers estimated that the total cost to taxpayers of the corn ethanol mandates now exceeds $33 billion per year.