ETHANOL FAILS ANY REASONABLE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS.

Matthew "Slow Boring" Yglesias, who argues with but mostly votes for Democrats, correctly details that argument.

Uisung Lee, Hoyoung Kwon, May Wu, and Michael Wang from the Argonne National Laboratory say that [ethanol lowers greenhouse gas production] because improvements in corn yields have eliminated prior concerns. By contrast, Tyler Lark, Nathan Hendricks, Aaron Smith, and Holly Gibbs say that the land-use changes induced by ethanol mandates (i.e., turning more acreage into growing corn) mean that “the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the [Renewable Fuel Standard] is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24 percent higher.”

The thing is, even if you use the Argonne numbers, this still comes out to something like $160 to $190 in costs per ton of carbon dioxide abated. Using less generous math, of course, the cost is essentially infinite because you’re raising emissions.

Beyond the specific carbon accounting, though, there are without a doubt significant environmental impacts of growing dramatically more corn. This means extra pesticide in the water and corn grown in space that could otherwise be used for conservation or recreation or housing. In a world of growing electrification, that land could also be used for utility-scale solar and wind projects that are dramatically more energy-dense.

All this carbon math really hinges on the fact that the amount of land dedicated to growing corn goes up, which happens because the biofuels mandate pushes up the price of corn, making it lucrative to grow more corn.

The primary cost here is simply that turning corn into gasoline makes food more expensive.

As we noted, directly, in the price of beef, and as multiple researchers called attention to, directly in the price of other food grains as farmers plant more corn and fewer beans, grain grasses, and substitution toward rice takes place.

But the rent-seekers will still get to wet their beaks, as long as at least one of the national political parties holds an early caucus in Iowa.

By forcing refiners to put more ethanol into gasoline than is warranted by the underlying economics, we are pushing up the price of both gasoline and food. We are doing so for emissions reductions that are probably non-existent, and administering considerable non-climate environmental damage for our trouble. Iowa is not a swing state, the politics of this don’t matter anymore, America has plenty of oil, and the future is electric cars anyways.

That "plenty of oil" is accurate with or without the Strait of Hormuz peaceful, and electric cars, perhaps with hybrid drive, have their place, but perhaps it is time to end agriculture subsidies more generally, as well as all those other attempts to nudge people by way of tax preferences or subsidies.  We are humans, not hamsters.