Sticking with the ethanol mandate

The leaders of the Environmental Protection Agency must be blind, said the Houston Chronicle in an editorial. They clearly can’t see “the harm the ethanol mandate is causing,” or they wouldn’t have rejected Texas’ request to cut its ethanol requirement in half. Using corn to meet mandates on producing and using ethanol for fuel may please farmers and corn refiners, but it is threatening Texas’ livestock industry and driving up food costs for us all.

Ethanol isn’t driving up grocery prices as much as food producers claim, said The Denver Post in an editorial. And “the mandate is hardly oppressive,” as the nine billion gallons of biofuels required each year are just 3 percent of our fuel. The EPA was right to stick by the government’s efforts to encourage domestic production as a step toward energy independence.

Everyone knows U.S. ethanol policy is nothing but “political catering to the powerful corn lobby,” said The Christian Science Monitor in an editorial. Otherwise Washington would never have tolerated the tripling of corn prices it has spurred over the last three years, and the “spreading hunger” that has resulted. “By mandating corn ethanol in an irresponsible way,” all Congress has done is prove that “it can't pick winners in energy technologies.”

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