Ethanol production is ramping up. At last count Indiana has 11 ethanol plants either in production or in the planning stage, and E85 (85 percent ethanol to 15 percent gasoline - not to be confused with E10, a much leaner blend of only 10 percent ethanol that has been around for decades) is beginning to show up in local gas stations for use in "cars that use flexfuels."

The owner's manual for my 2000 Ford Focus warns that using ethanol will damage the engine. So clearly, this blend isn't going to help me or the other millions of drivers of older cars. It won't help the poor who will be driving the older models for the next dozen years as well.

In fact, production of ethanol fuel isn't going to help anybody very much, even those who buy FFVs - flexfuel vehicles. And despite the advertising, it won't help farmers either.

The only winners are auto makers, the oil companies and the agri-business monopolies.

Recent research confirms what I've long suspected. E85 is a scam, a huge corporate welfare scheme that is guaranteed to make all the rest of us losers.

For starters, auto makers are getting big tax breaks for each flexfuel vehicle they build, even if most of those vehicles will never burn a drop of E85.

After interviewing over 50 experts, the April Consumer Reports Used Car Buying Guide "determined that E85 will cost consumers more money than gasoline and that there are concerns about whether the government's support of FFVs is really helping the U.S. achieve energy independence."

According to Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, flexfuel vehicles are rated differently than regular vehicles. As the Consumer Reports article pointed out, a car that would normally be rated at 21 miles per gallon would be rated at 35 mpg instead if it used flexible fuel.

The auto maker would get the tax credit even though the car might well never use E85 after it was sold. It also wouldn't get 35 miles per gallon.

This subsidy allows car manufacturers to build more gas hogs and get tax credits for doing it. And despite the high price of gasoline, as of this month, light trucks and SUVs still made up about 53 percent of vehicle sales in the United States.

In addition, E85 costs consumers more than straight gasoline. Though the price at the pump for E85 is about 20-40 cents a gallon less than for straight gasoline ($3.13 a gallon for E85, as opposed to $3.39 for economy regular on May 25 in Jasper), because E85 is about 27 percent less efficient, drivers get far fewer miles per gallon.

Without the subsidies the price of E85 would be much higher, as much as triple according to some estimates. Oil refiners get a 51-cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline, costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars annually.

Essentially, ethanol is a taxpayer funded handout program for not only the auto manufacturers and oil companies, but also for the huge agri-industrial corporations like Archer Daniels Midland, which controls about a third of the ethanol market.

While corn prices are way up and the USDA says farmers can expect prices to be double what they were last year, it's mainly the large corporations that stand to benefit from ethanol - to the tune of about $700 million next year estimated for ADM alone.

As Tom Philpott figures in a December 2006 Grist Magazine article, based on last quarter's corporate earnings, every dollar of ADM's corporate profit from ethanol costs the public about $2.85. And none of this includes local and state incentives like property tax abatements, etc.

For instance, Indiana has given over $7 million in incentives alone to Louis Dreyfus Agricultural Industries LLC, a French company, to build the world's largest ethanol plant in Indiana.

That's only for one manufacturing plant. According to a study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the total amount of subsidies for liquid ethanol fall within the range of $5.1 billion to $6.8 billion, and the cost is growing rapidly.

None of this counts the higher prices for food that consumers can expect to pay because the corn is being diverted from food to fuel.

As far as helping cut back on global warming, it is unlikely that E85 will make much difference. Because growing the corn takes energy, and several passes over a field with big machinery, not to mention the cost of transportation (which can't be done by pipeline because ethanol is so corrosive), and the conversion process itself, make it likely that ethanol will produce at least as much greenhouse gas as gasoline.

In fact, David Pimentel's landmark study says it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to make corn ethanol, making it a net energy loser.

An article on the Car and Driver Web site pointed out that, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, "E85 produces only a 4 percent reduction in carbon dioxide. In the near term, ethanol has no chance of mitigating global warming."

Other studies point out that cheaper ways already exist to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere - everything from raising fuel economy standards to tune ups.

Our reliance on foreign oil hasn't been nudged either. We just keep on driving more, using more, blindly planning for new highways that would only add to huge problems with gridlock.

According to the DOE, in the first quarter of 2007 Americans used 500,000 more barrels of oil per day than that period last year, and usage is expected to rise over the next few years despite increased use of flexfuels.

What kind of suckers are we to allow this to happen? Clearly we are being taken for a major ride on a dead end road with this one.

Scams like E85 are making us feel good that we are doing something about climate change and ending our addiction to oil. But in reality, the E85 boom is simply a distraction to keep us driving our big cars and building new highways. It's shielding us from the hard truth that if we really want to end our dependence on oil or seriously reduce global warming gasses, we will have to do more than buy a new car or change to a new fuel.

Conservation is the only way out of the mess we are in, and change will not be easy. But unless we start to rethink our dependence on the automobile, and take the billions of dollars that are propping up the status quo and put them into public transportation projects, we are going to be up the proverbial creek without a paddle in short order.

During WWII gasoline was rationed for a "good cause." Most people didn't complain, but jumped at the chance to work together and do something for victory.

It would seem that we have pressing cause enough to do that now. Is patriotism so dead and greed and self-interest so rampant that we can no longer work together for a common good?

We could end our dependence on foreign oil, cut greenhouse gasses to the bone and still prosper. If we stop buying into quick fixes like E85 and make the decision to change the way we live and travel, and then demand that our political leaders take action, we could actually see some genuine progress.

Isn't it time we wise up and do something?

Jeanne Melchior is President of Protect Our Woods, a southern Indiana environmental advocacy group. She also teaches at Vincennes University Jasper. She can be reached at melchior@psci.net.