Ethanol requirements were an attempt to curb global warming but proved to be wildly insufficient and possibly even detrimental. Now the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting a reduction in the amount of ethanol required to be mixed into gasoline
I’m not sure who all is a big fan of ethanol in the United States, save for the corn farmers benefiting from federal subsidies (about $5 billion a year) and the legislators representing them. Corn subsidies are actually one of a few things that cut across the political spectrum in terms of unpopularity. On the left, it’s seen as money going to corporate agriculture to promote a fuel source that’s not actually all that green, mostly serving to give conventional automobiles the slimmest illusion of greenness. (Ethanol might even wind up increasing greenhouse gas emmisions actually.) While, on the right, even the illusion of greenness is undesirable and the whole enterprise of ethanol fuel mix requirements (however slim) coupled with the veneer of welfare, corporate or not, is obviously shit.
