Is it possible? Can Congress really admit to a mistake and undo the horrible mess it has created?
Did we just hear the death knell for corn ethanol? Congress may finally be coming to its senses about one of the biggest green policy failures in America, as two bills were introduced yesterday to fix the corn ethanol mandate.
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To this point, US farmers have been diverting more and more of their corn crops towards ethanol refineries to satisfy EPA mandates stemming from the 2007 Renewable Fuels Standard. In 2006, before that standard went into place, just 23 percent of America’s corn crop went towards producing ethanol. That number rose to 43 percent last year.
Corn ethanol fails every test a biofuel could hope to pass. It doesn’t lower emissions; it raises them. It also raises the global price of corn, starving the world’s poor and possibly inciting riots. But EPA mandates are propping up this boondoggle. Producers are scrambling to snatch up biofuel credits to meet the federally-mandated quota this year because neither supply nor demand will be sufficient to produce the more than 13 billion barrels of ethanol required.
Dipping into the foood chain for our fuel needs was so breathtakingly stupid it's amazing even the dolts in Congress didn't see it.
Kinda gives me hope that Obamacare won't be around forever. Oops. Wishful thinking.
