This is a really fun ad with a very clever way of expressing their message. A man is on a stage with a ventriloquist dummy, and he has the dummy say that ethanol is bed for your car, and the guy asks the dummy: "Why do you say that?" And the dummy says: "Because that's what you made me say!" Then the ventriloquist puts his hand over the dummy's mouth and smiles nervously.
This is extremely well done and wonderfully creative. The oil industry has so much lobbying power, they've been able to basically hold back energy technology for years. And in conjunction with the Detroit auto industry and its special interest groups, they were able to kill the General Motors EV1, the electric car from the 1990s. That sucks! But if we're going to use ethanol, we shouldn't be making it out of corn: we need corn for food, and using it for ethanol drives up food prices a lot, as well as destroying a source of food for starving people worldwide. If we're going to waste food like this and price gouge people's groceries, that makes ethanol little better than oil, which we can't eat. So this ad is not telling the whole story either. (Oh, well...)
Wouldn't it be nice just to develop alternative energy sources without people with nefarious self-interest and deep pockets trying to prevent it from happening? If oil companies would do the right thing and develop the next generation of energy themselves, they'd own it too, and when we transition away from oil, they'd still do well monetarily. And think of the money they'd save on lobbying to keep the status quo! In the end, we'd all win; but I guess that's cheating, huh? Lame.
Here's the fun ventriloquist ethanol bit:
http://yourenodummy.com
