Moreover, by raising the price of corn by a few dimes a bushel, the program, according to even the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has the perverse effect of actually doing net harm to the agricultural sector. But then again, every one vote in Iowa is worth a lot more than four votes elsewhere, so it meets the political cost-benefit test. So we won't be turning fireplaces into power plants anytime soon. The environmental benefits of biomass are similarly dubious. It takes almost as much energy to grow this stuff as it produces after being harvested.
Some emissions are lower, but others are higher.
The ethanol program is almost universally despised by the environmental establishment, but the environmentalists are oddly optimistic about the ability of government-funded research to remedy the problem. Billions of tax dollars and regulatory preferences once showered that industry, too, but the federal subsidy produced nothing but angry environmentalists and ridiculously expensive electricity. The solar and wind power crusades also continue to disappoint. We Americans are constantly being bombarded by ringing denunciations of political corruption in Washington. The idea, however, that the scandal lies in the conveyor belt of money from corporate America to political America is quaint.