When do subsidies outlive their usefulness?

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) wrote an op-ed piece "A mature industry can sacrifice: That was the case with ethanol, and it's especially the case with oil" in today's Star Tribune.

She and others worked "to end the major tax credit for ethanol".  Ethanol production "is now a competitive, established industry in the energy market…"

She asks why the oil industry isn't treated the same.

I think the answer is two-fold - lots of conservatives don't like the ethanol industry but they are paid big bucks by the oil industry.

Were all the oil subsidies a good idea some time in the past?  Possibly.  Consider that lots of oil was discovered and extracted by wildcatters.  These were small groups that took the risks, financial and physical, to find the oil and drill the original wells.  Many were the dry holes that they drilled.

Congress in its great wisdom saw the huge benefit of an oil-based economy and gave the hundreds or thousands of wildcatters a boost through various tax credits.

Now the oil industry is a mature industry of only five companies.  Their probability of dry wells is practically nil compared to the wildcatters.  Even with their safety shortcuts, their financial risks are small.

It's way past time to cut the oil subsidies.

Does "green energy" use too much water?

Today's Star Tribune Business section had an opinion article, "Saving droplets but losing gallons" by Samuel Lieberman.

He writes that ethanol and nuclear power consume too much water.

"[E]nergy production accounts for 39 percent of freshwater use, or 190 billion gallons per day."

and

"When it comes to thirsty energy, ethanol (2,000 gallons of water per gallon of gasoline) and nuclear power (millions of gallons of water per day) are the most prodigious users. Ethanol should be eliminated and nuclear power should be downsized, and the money and water should be reallocated to more efficient options, such as natural gas and geothermal energy."

I would assume water consumption would apply to any biomass fuel. It needs the water to grow.

But would any biofuel be that much a water consumer, whether ethanol or any other carbohydrate-based fuel. When these are burned they are converted into carbon dioxide and water. Both would be put into the atmosphere and in turn consumed by plants again. Would there be a balance point that plants would consume all the carbon dioxide that humans created and the water would turn into sufficient rain for all uses? That would make an interesting equation.

Then too the water used to cool nuclear plants would also be put back into the entire system. Would the water used in this way be hotter or cooler than the water given all in burning hydrocarbons or carbohydrates?

Possibly the problem is that the recycling is not occurring fast enough. How quickly does the water that we use get back into the watersheds that it came from? And how pure will it be?

An example of the recycling not occurring fast enough is the Himalayas. The snows of the Himalayas were once adequate to provide water to Tibet and other mountain countries as well as India and China. But no longer. Lieberman writes:
"China's recent clash with Tibet was incorrectly ascribed to human rights issues. It was about rights -- water rights. China needs access to Tibet's formerly ample surplus. Tibet's water, which comes from the Himalayas, is waning, so it is unwilling to help its thirsty neighbor."

Maybe the greatest peace activity that the U. S. can do is to have a crash project to find cheap ways to desalinate ocean water and move it far inland. If the Romans with their technology could move water from the mountains to Rome; is it such a far reach for modern technology to move water from the oceans to the mountains? I think the total human cost of not doing something like this is greater than the cost of doing it.