The rising price of corn is forcing ethanol plants to close, and plans to build new plants are being postponed. This could cause a shortfall of 5 billion gallons a year which would in turn force the price of gasoline up as well as pushing corn prices down.

We need ethanol and biodiesel. But ethanol is too often produced from corn, and that means using cropland once used to grow food. It can and should be made from other sources like agricultural processing scrap, plants that don’t need farmland like switchgrass, and perhaps most promising of all, from algae.

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Credit where credit is due. GM is feverishly working on a next generation hybrid,the Chevy Volt, which could make existing hybrids obsolete. The Volt would use a gas engine to supplement the electric engine, the opposite of what current hybrids do, and would use microscopic amounts of gas most of the time. It will go 40 miles on a charge using no gasoline with no emissions and has a range of 640 miles when using gasoline.

However, they haven’t developed the battery for it yet, so they are having to create the the car and invent a new battery at the same time. Not good.

GM is most definitely pedal to the metal on this, and is deliberately developing the car in full view of the media and not with their usual secrecy. This is commendable. So far, the battery has been problematic. Let’s hope GM gets the Volt out on schedule in 2010 and gives Toyota some competition again. The more plug-in hybrids, the better.

The Atlantic has a long, worth-reading article on the Volt.

GM official Chevy Volt site.

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SFist brings the important news of a petition drive to rename a San Francisco water pollution control plant to The George W Bush Sewage Plant.

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That’s what the sticker on the new Camry I just saw at a Toyota dealer said, “comes with a full tank of gas.”

Meanwhile GM will be offering zero percent financing on full-sized trucks and SUVs for 72 months. Um, maybe a big part of the problem, besides soaring gas prices, is the trucks are so expensive they require 6 years to pay for?

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And you thought peak oil, peak food, and peak water were worrisome? Ha! There’s a new peak peril primed to produce prodigious panic - Peak Phosphorus.

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“I’m convinced more than ever that Israeli security will never be fully assured without the birth of a second state, a Palestinian state”

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