How Brazil created the international ethanol boom

Maybe Americans need to be pointing our fingers south at Brazil for making us spend so much money on ethanol. The William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review has just published an article that delves into how the South American country helped fuel the recent world-wide ethanol boom. Using the spring 2007 meeting of US President Bush and Brazilian President da Silva as a starting point, the article dissects how Brazil's 30+ year sugar cane ethanol project helped get the biofuel onto the international stage and how the US can now learn from that experiment. Looking toward the future, author Vanessa Cordonnier, an Assistant Attorney General in the Environmental Bureau of the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, examines "whether a similar program in the U.S. would be in the best interests of the nation and the environment." What do you think?

If you're interested, you can check out the 30-page report in PDF. Thanks to the magazine's editor-in-chief, David Sella-Villa, for the tip!

[Source: William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review]