Why do Brazilian cars run on sugar?

It’s no secret that society will eventually have to transition away from fossil fuels. Some governments and businesses think the answer is biofuels,like ethanol.  Ethanol is a type of alcohol—the same type of alcohol that humans have been producing for millenia.  And so, in much of the world, the techniques to produce ethanol are already known and exploited.  All it takes is the fermentation of sugary crop, like potatoes, corn, or sugarcane.  The result is a clear liquid fuel that can power engines, similar to gasoline.  Brazil has long been the world’s leading producer of sugarcane.  In the 1970’s, Brazil started switching more and more of its fuel supply over to ethanol.  What started as an effort to combat the trade embargoes turned into a large-scale experiment on alternative fuels.  But the story of Brazilian ethanol is complicated—It’s a worldwide industry predicated on exploitative labor and has significant environmental problems of its own.  On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Jessica Chiriboga interviews Jennifer Eaglin,  about the history of Brazil’s ethanol industry. They discuss the conditions that primed Brazil to make the transition, and the lessons learned along the way. Book: Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol  Guest:  Jennifer Eaglin, PhD, Assistant Professor of Environmental History and Sustainability at Ohio State University Producer: Jessica Chiriboga Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

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UnTextbooked is brought to you by teen change-makers who are looking for answers to big questions. Have you ever wondered if protests really can save lives, why assimilation required Native American kids to attend boarding schools, how Black-led organizations for mutual aid began, how the fear of communism led the United States to plan the overthrows of many leaders in Latin America, or why Brazilian cars run on sugar? Or maybe you've questioned when Asian Americans will stop being seen as "perpetual foreigners," how African heritage influences Black activism, or what resilience looks like for Iranian women?  Your textbooks probably didn't teach you how American Jews were an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, if history’s greatest leaders were generalists or specialists, how a Black teenager and his young lawyer changed America’s criminal justice system, or if either the US or the USSR won the Cold War. Did you know some of the forgotten BIPOC women of history were spying in aid of the French Resistance, that there's more to being a leader than going down with your battleship, or that there is a long history of gender expression in Native American cultures that goes beyond the male/female binary? Listen in as we interview famous authors and historians who have the answers.  Context is the key to understanding topics like British imperialism, segregation, racism, criminal justice, identifying as non-binary and so much more. These intergenerational conversations bring the full power of history to you with the depth and vividness that most textbooks lack. Real history, to help you find answers to your big questions. UnTextbooked makes history unboring forever.