Han wrote:

Insisting that ethanol is the panacea today is very much like a
novelist proposed regarding soy beans some fifty years ago.

Sorry, I think a word is missing. Did you mean "like what a
novelist"? Even then I don't get it without more specifics. I do
remember that soy and soybeans are supposed to a panacea.

Right. My mistake.

The novel was "Atlas Shrugged," and it was the insistence of the government
that all resources be placed at the call of the soybean industry. Steel
production was diverted to build combines to harvest the beans. Virtually
all rail traffice was diverted to haul the billions of tons of soybeans to
processing centers. And so on. The government marched with a single vision
to the glory of soybeans, soybeans which would free us all from want and
deprivation and usher in a new age of plenty that we could not imagine.

The beans rotted while parked in the rail cars.