"Ethanol and biodiesel allow people to burn a cleaner form of energy"
About this Quote
“Cleaner” is doing the political heavy lifting here. Mark Kennedy’s line doesn’t argue chemistry so much as it sells permission: keep burning fuel, just swap the label. The phrasing is deliberately consumer-friendly - “allow people to burn” frames the issue as personal choice and everyday practicality, not as an industrial system with winners, losers, and hard constraints. It’s an optimism of continuity: we don’t have to change our habits; we can upgrade the input.
The intent is classic late-20th/early-21st-century centrism on energy policy: find a bridge between environmental concern and economic growth, between farm-state interests and suburban drivers. Ethanol and biodiesel were marketed as the rare policy that could make everyone feel virtuous while keeping the engine running: support domestic agriculture, reduce dependence on foreign oil, and claim emissions benefits. In that context, “cleaner” is a political adjective, not an environmental audit.
The subtext points to coalition-building. Ethanol signals corn-country economics and the institutional power of agribusiness; biodiesel nods to innovation and a greener brand of capitalism. The quote also sidesteps the messy debates that define biofuels: land use, food-versus-fuel tradeoffs, fertilizer runoff, and the fact that “cleaner” depends on how you measure lifecycle emissions. Kennedy’s sentence works because it offers a simple moral upgrade in a policy area that usually punishes simplicity. It promises progress without insisting on sacrifice - a tidy narrative in a field defined by ugly tradeoffs.
The intent is classic late-20th/early-21st-century centrism on energy policy: find a bridge between environmental concern and economic growth, between farm-state interests and suburban drivers. Ethanol and biodiesel were marketed as the rare policy that could make everyone feel virtuous while keeping the engine running: support domestic agriculture, reduce dependence on foreign oil, and claim emissions benefits. In that context, “cleaner” is a political adjective, not an environmental audit.
The subtext points to coalition-building. Ethanol signals corn-country economics and the institutional power of agribusiness; biodiesel nods to innovation and a greener brand of capitalism. The quote also sidesteps the messy debates that define biofuels: land use, food-versus-fuel tradeoffs, fertilizer runoff, and the fact that “cleaner” depends on how you measure lifecycle emissions. Kennedy’s sentence works because it offers a simple moral upgrade in a policy area that usually punishes simplicity. It promises progress without insisting on sacrifice - a tidy narrative in a field defined by ugly tradeoffs.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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