TPO22 Task1

In the reading material, the author cities three reasons to support his viewpoint that ethanol is not suitable to replace the gasoline as fuel.Nevertheless, the lecturer in the listening material argues that ethanol indeed is a good alternative to gasoline and the points made in the reading is not convincing.

First and foremost, the author argues that ethanol is not helpful in the environmental problem caused by gasoline use( global warming caused by the release of carbon dioxide).However, the lecturer offers an opposite stand that ethanol will not add global warming.It is true that the use of ethanol will release carbon dioxide, but from another perspective, the plant such as corn used for producing ethanol can absorb carbon dioxide.Hence, ethanol helps to solve global warming by growing plant to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In addition, the lecturer casts doubt on the author’s another reason that production of ethanol will reduce the amount of plants, which is to be used as source of food for animals,demonstrating that we can use a special sort of plants which doesn’t serve as food of animals, in which way, the amount of food source will not decrease.

Finally, the author’s third reason that ethanol fuel is not able to compete with gasoline on price (the temporary equality on price would be break once the government stop helping producers and cancel the tax subsidies) is also counteracted by the lecturer who points out that ethanol can compete with gasoline without the support of government.Once people start to buy ethanol fuel, the production of ethanol would increase drastically, and then the price of it would decrease.According to a survey, the production of ethanol would be three times greater than now,and the price of it would drop by 40 percent.