Alcohol's Journey: What Does Humanity Take, and What Does Nature Get Back? An Environmental Study (The Alcohol Series, Part 2 of 3)

Part 2 of The Alcohol Series. This paper follows alcohol’s environmental journey: the land, water, agricultural chemicals and plastics used to produce it; its contribution to climate change; production waste; what passes through the human body into wastewater; whether alcohol truly disappears from water, soil and air; and how long natural systems take to recover. It examines fuel ethanol, produced in far greater quantities than beverage ethanol, and asks who decides its production and who pays for its environmental cost. The evidence is examined through a proposed natural law of balance, in which every gain humanity records carries a corresponding loss, paid in another kind and in another place. All figures are graded for strength of evidence in the endnotes.