Doing Nothing Would Have Been Better
Introduction: The Illusion of Green Policy
We’ve been sold a lie… that mixing ethanol into gasoline is a climate solution.
But if you look past the headlines and rhetoric, the evidence suggests otherwise. Ethanol blending, born of good intentions and sold as a cleaner-burning, renewable solution, has become a massive taxpayer-funded boondoggle.
It’s a program that consumes nearly half of our corn production, devours 13% of all U.S. cropland, and arguably delivers no net benefit when emissions from land use, fertilizer application, and fuel combustion are fully considered.
And now, we finally have the legal and scientific opportunity to reverse it.
Just this week, NOAA quietly announced it would discontinue its “billion-dollar disaster” database, long a central talking point in climate alarmism. This database exaggerated climate impacts by linking disaster costs to CO₂ without adjusting for population growth or increased coastal development.
After decades of using this as a scare-metric to link extreme weather to climate change, NOAA is quietly walking away. Why? Because the cost of disasters has little to do with storm strength and everything to do with inflation, development, and increasing property values in coastal areas.
As I wrote in Reviving Real Environmentalism, these kinds of metrics are crafted to deceive, implying climate causality where only economics exist. A Category 4 hurricane hitting Miami Beach in 2025 will cost more than the same storm hitting a less developed coast in 1970, even if the storm is no stronger. Ending this flawed metric is a small but significant step toward returning to honest environmental analysis.
That same logic applies to ethanol.
With the fall of the Chevron doctrine, a landmark shift in how courts defer to federal agencies, combined with growing scrutiny of the EPA’s regulatory overreach under the Clean Air Act, we have a window to revisit and repeal mandates that have long overstayed their usefulness.
This is a call to the U.S. Secretaries of Energy and Agriculture, the EPA Administrator, and the President of the United States: repeal the ethanol mandates. End the charade. Restore market efficiency, cut emissions honestly, and let American farmers grow what makes sense, not what Washington subsidizes.
What Ethanol Is and Why It Was Mandated
Ethanol is a biofuel, primarily derived in the U.S. from corn. It’s blended into gasoline at concentrations ranging from 10% (E10) to 85% (E85 for flex-fuel vehicles). The original justification? Ethanol would displace petroleum, reduce dependence on foreign oil, cut tailpipe emissions, and support American farmers.
The first major push came in the 1970s oil crisis. But the real regulatory teeth arrived with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and were turbocharged by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007. These acts mandated ever-increasing volumes of ethanol to be blended into the national fuel supply.
Fast forward nearly two decades, and we now pour roughly 40%–45% of all U.S. corn into fuel tanks, not dinner plates. That’s nearly 13% of all U.S. cropland dedicated to a fuel that:
- Delivers lower energy per gallon than gasoline
- Increases food and feed costs
- Raise land-use emissions
- Requires significant fertilizer input
- Shows little to no net climate benefit
- Damages small engines and degrades fuel systems, particularly in boats, motorcycles, and lawn equipment
Add to that the rising cost of groceries and farmland scarcity, and it’s no surprise that American families are feeling the pinch.
The most comprehensive study to date, published in PNAS, reveals the full story, showing that when all emissions are counted, corn ethanol is actually worse for the climate than gasoline. That study also contains figures (see subscriber section) demonstrating the upward pressure on food prices and housing development costs as cropland is misallocated.
And ethanol is not alone in this charade. Green diesel regulations, like those mandating diesel particulate filters (DPFs) and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) systems, also deliver unintended consequences. These “clean” diesel technologies may reduce localized pollution, but they do so at the cost of 5–10% higher fuel consumption, leading to 10–20 g/km more CO₂ emissions, as noted in multiple SAE and EPA studies. In some cases, removing these technologies from diesel trucks reduces overall emissions by increasing efficiency, even as particulates increase.
So when policies meant to “green” our fuel supply end up increasing global emissions and wasting taxpayer money, it’s fair to ask: Would doing nothing have been better?
Want the full data, charts, and details behind the ethanol lie? Subscribe now to unlock the subscriber-only breakdown… including peer-reviewed figures showing ethanol’s full emissions profile, the hidden cost to taxpayers, its inflationary impact on food and housing, and why the engines running on it pay the ultimate price. Plus access to over 350 unique articles at IrrationalFear.com.
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