Ethanol...stupid? Care to elaborate? Let's see...we can grow it ourselves and use it today to substitute for OPEC oil....hmmmm. I'm not saying that this is a great solution, and it's not even my top choice for what to do today, which would be---
Ethanol is a terrible solution. Have you checked the price of milk, cereal, meat, cheese.... lately? There simply is not enough land available to produce the corn requred. If every acre of corn were used for ethanol, it would replace only 12.3% of the gasoline used in this country. That would leave zero corn for food.
Also any solution that has to have government subsidy to survive is not cheaper, your still paying for it in the end.
As a motor fuel, ethanol from corn produces a modest 25% more energy than is consumed — including from fossil fuels — in growing the corn, converting it into ethanol and shipping it for use in gasoline.
Compared with gasoline, it produces only 12% less "greenhouse" gasses linked to global warming. It has environmental drawbacks, including "markedly greater" releases of nitrogen, phosphorous and pesticides into waterways as runoff from corn fields. Ethanol, especially at higher concentrations in gasoline, also produce more smog-causing pollutants than gasoline per unit of energy burned.