How has Brazil managed to establish an ethanol economy?
Almost every engine used in a car produced in Brazil today is engineered to run on ethanol and petrol because government set directions for the economy and for the corporate sector that gave them parameters. The number of jobs you are talking about is not in theory. Carmakers would argue the jobs they can save are not in theory either. The political agenda at the moment is determined by the major actors in the economy. They are the companies and sectors that have established themselves as mainstays of the economy.
Almost every engine used in a car produced in Brazil today is engineered to run on ethanol and petrol because government set directions for the economy and for the corporate sector that gave them parameters. The number of jobs you are talking about is not in theory. Carmakers would argue the jobs they can save are not in theory either. The political agenda at the moment is determined by the major actors in the economy. They are the companies and sectors that have established themselves as mainstays of the economy. Yes, we can just give $20 billion to a car company or $80 billion to an insurance company that will be partly paid out in bonuses. Or we can direct some of that money to sectors where we can create—in the short term—hundreds of thousands if not millions of new jobs. There are enormous long-term benefits too. It doesn’t take much intelligence to realize that if you have a massive program of investing in energy efficiency in buildings you also reduce the energy consumption of a
