Marlo Lewis

The first of EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations kicked in yesterday (Sunday, Jan. 2). More are on the way. Is the agency following the law or doing an end-run around democracy?

My New Year’s Day column in PajamasMedia.Com addresses this vital issue.  The column restates what seems to me the common sense of the matter. When Congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970, it did not design or intend the Act to be a framework for global climate change policy, let alone for de-carbonizing the U.S. economy. Congress, moreover, has never, in the intervening years, given its approval for the Act to be used as such a framework, or for such purposes. 

Restating the obvious is important at this time because the greenhouse lobby is trying to persuade the incoming 112th (Tea Party) Congress that stopping EPA’s power grab would undermine (“roll back”) the Clean Air Act. EPA, they claim, is acting “under court order” and  just following the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA. In effect, EPA’s apologists argue, Congress’s only ethical choice is to sleep in the bed it made back in 1970 and let EPA determine climate policy.

This is bunkum for three main reasons. First, the Supreme Court in Mass. v. EPA did not order EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. The Court said that EPA could decline to regulate if it provided an explanation grounded in statutory reasons (p. 32). EPA did not even discuss this option, preferring to push the start button on a regulatory process that would dramatically expand its control over the economy.

Second, and more importantly, the 5-4 majority misread the Clean Air Act, setting the stage for an economy-squashing array of “absurd results” that EPA now can avoid only by amending (“tailoring”) the statute, which is not kosher under our Constitution of separated powers. The Supreme Court’s errors are the main focus of my Pamajas Media column and a MasterResource.Org column last summer rebutting former EPA Administrator Russell Train’s argument that EPA is merely acting as Congress intended.

Third, even if it were true (it is not) that the 1970 Clean Air Act implicitly authorizes EPA to make climate policy, Congress should still stop EPA. As explained in both aforementioned columns, once the Clean Air Act is applied to greenhouse gases, the logic of the Act impels its transformation into an Anti-Stimulus Program or even an economically-suicidal de-industrialization mandate.

Besides, if war is too important to be left to the generals, climate policy is too important to be left to non-elected, politically-unaccountable, bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges appointed for life. Congress, not EPA, should decide the content and direction of national policy.

An internal Colorado State University (CSU) study concludes that the university can’t afford to become carbon-neutral by 2020, as planned. A news item about the study appeared in the Dec. 18 edition of Coloradoan.Com. Erick, a blogger on RedState, has a funny commentary on the story.

CSU had been planning to build what the Coloradoan describes as a “massive electricity-generating wind farm” on the university’s Maxwell campus. However, a few weeks ago the deal collapsed. Fort Collins campus President Tony Frank said the University can’t afford to achieve carbon-neutrality in the foreseeable future. How come?

Well, for one thing, CSU emissions have been going up in recent years: “In fiscal year 2006, CSU emitted 217,070 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Those emissions rose 7 per-cent by 2009.” Okay, but why? The Coloradoan reports:

The university counts emissions for everything from electrical power generation and faculty commuting to air travel by students studying abroad. And when it builds new buildings and admits additional students, the demand generally goes up.

“We could save a lot of energy by sending the students home, sending the researchers home. But that’s not what we do here,” said Carol Dollard, who helps coordinate CSU’s climate-action efforts. “We’re adding students, adding buildings.”

Erick comments: “An expanding business generates more emissions. Who knew?”

Still, why can’t MSU just cut emissions and lead by example? I mean after all, they’re not some greedy oil company. They’re a bastion of progressive thinking, they want to save the planet, and they don’t lack political will. What gives? The Coloradoan explains:

In order to significantly reduce emissions, CSU would have to dramatically shift where it gets its power and dramatically reduce the amount of power it uses. Most of the electricity in Colorado comes from coal-fired power plants and, increasingly, from burning natural gas. But making that shift is expensive because CSU uses so much electricity, not just for residence halls and classroom buildings, but laboratories filled with power-hungry computers and experimental equipment.

Oh, so ejumacation and “the science” depend on electricity, and affordable, fossil-based electricity supports learning and educational opportunity. Facts CSU students probably never encounter in the classroom.

As President Frank put it, “For us, you’d have to really jack up tuition [to run MSU on zero-carbon energy] and put it toward plans like that.” 

Erick of RedState comments: “Really? You mean mandating a huge reduction in emissions would require a business to pass on those costs to its customers?”

He concludes:

Colorado State University learned more about basic economics here than they ever could have from a government-funded study. While I’d love to believe that this knowledge will be passed on to the greater academic community, I just can’t imagine that it will. The irony of their own comments are completely lost on them.

In two recent blog posts (here and here), I examined EPA’s and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) rationale for establishing first-ever fuel-economy standards for trucks.
 
Today on MasterResource.Org, I provide additional evidence that what the agencies are pleased to call the trucking industry’s “under-investment” in fuel-saving technology is an unintended (although not unforseen) consequence of EPA’s ever-tightening diesel-engine emission standards.
 
In short, I argue that the declining fuel economy of 18-wheelers over the past decade is a case of government failure, not market failure. Conveniently, EPA’s role in holding back heavy-truck fuel economy is never discussed in the agencies’ proposed rule.

To read my column, click here.

On March 20, 2000, The Independent, a British newspaper, reported that “Snowfalls are just a thing of the past.” Global warming was simply making the UK too warm for heavy snowfalls. The column quotes Dr. David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia — yes, the epicenter of what would become the Climategate scandal — as saying that within a few years snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event.” Indeed, Viner opined, “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

Similarly, David Parker, at the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said that eventually British children could have only “virtual” experience of snow via movies and the Internet.

Well, last week another British newspaper, the Daily Mail, reported “The Coldest December since records began as temperatures plummet to minus 10C bringing travel chaos across Britain.” Here’s a snippet from the article (also excerpted by Wesley J. Smith in First Things):

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill. And tonight the nation was braced for another 10 in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned. The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, the lead item in Google News is a Bloomberg story, “Snow Blankets US East Coast, Stranding Travelers.”  Bloomberg reports that, “New York City’s Central Park had 20 inches (51 centimeters) of snow by 8 a.m., the most for the month in 62 years.” This was “the most snow in the park for any December since 1948, the agency’s website showed.”

As in the UK, the record-breaking snowfall is disrupting transportation, keeping travelers snowbound and delaying Santa’s deliveries. It’s also downing power lines and turning off the Christmas lights. Some highlights:

• “More than 6,000 flights were canceled in the region since yesterday as airports closed.”
• “The day after Christmas is one of the five busiest shopping days of the year, and it may take retailers two weeks to capture sales lost yesterday,” an industry analyst told Bloomberg.
• “NJ Transit, which transports about 170,000 commuters to and from New York City daily, suspended bus service as of 8:30 p.m. yesterday, according to a statement.”
• “Four hundred subway passengers were aboard an A train that was stuck in Queens for more than six hours, until it could be pushed to a station by another train. The Coney Island area was without subway service.”  
• “Consolidated Edison Inc. reported there were 6,167 customers in Queens, New York, and 1,811 in Westchester County without power. “
• “National Grid Plc, which provides electricity in New York and Massachusetts, was reporting power outages at 14 sites throughout New York and Massachusetts affecting about 29,727 homes and businesses. The largest was in Norfolk, Massachusetts, where 10,902 customers were without power.”

As my colleague Heritage Foundation economist David Kreutzer observed at a panel discussion, winter is the biggest climate-related threat to public health and welfare!

Britain has had three snowy winters in a row, and this year’s Snowmageddon USA follows last year’s Snowpocalypse. Despite global warming, it seems, our children may never enjoy either Florida’s balmy weather in New York and Boston or Mediterranean “liveability” in the British isles.

The corn lobby defeated bipartisan efforts this year to remove two of ethanol’s political privileges, the 45¢ per gallon blender’s tax credit and the 54¢ per gallon protective tariff against imported Brazilian sugarcane ethanol.

However, roughly 60 organizations from across the political spectrum joined forces to challenge King Corn, and many are resolved to work together to carry on the fight next year.

Perhaps even more important, ethanol-subsidy foes now occupy the moral high ground. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune, left-leaning stalwarts that usually applaud every green fad and cheer every government intervention in the economy, all say it’s time to end to the blender’s credit. Politically-correct Time Magazine calls federal ethanol policy “the clean energy scam.” Even Al Gore acknowledges that his previous support for ethanol subsidies was a “mistake” undertaken to win the support of corn farmers in the Iowa presidential primary.

Aside from corn farmers, ethanol distillers, and their mouthpieces in Congress, hardly any informed person disputes that corn ethanol does squat for U.S. energy security, inflates grain prices, shortchanges consumers at the pump, contributes to air and water pollution, and (on a life-cycle basis) emits more carbon dioxide than the gasoline it replaces.

Among the “progressive” organs to turn a skeptical eye on ethanol is National Public Radio, which this week ran a three-part series on the topic. 

In the first segment, Prof. David Swenson at Iowa State University, in the heart of corn country, takes issue with industry ads claiming that ethanol has created “nearly 400,000 jobs.” The actual figure, Swenson says, is “in the neighborhood of 30,000-35,000 jobs.”  

But doesn’t ethanol help insulate us from the rollercoaster of global crude oil prices by providing an alternative to gasoline?

Quite the reverse, explains Iowa State University Prof. Bruce Babcock in NPR’s second segment. Precisely because ethanol competes with gasoline, “we’ve now hitched the price of corn, inextricably linked the price of corn to the price of crude oil.” And because corn competes for land and customers with other grains, is widely used in food processing, and is a key livestock feed, the price of food is now linked to the price of crude oil. NPR comments: “With corn prices more closely tied to oil prices, when the price of gas goes up, it raises the demand for ethanol. That means consumers will feel it in two places: at the pump and on the dinner table.”

EPA recently approved the sale of E-15 — motor fuel blended with 15% ethanol, which contains 50% more ethanol than the E-10 misleadingly sold at service stations as “regular gasoline.” Growth Energy, a leading ethanol industry group, claims that consumers should be happy to fill their tanks with E-15 because that’s what NASCAR drivers now use. An obvious non-sequiter. A diet that’s good for a professional football player or a professional marathon runner is not necessarily good for a couch potato or even a weekend warrior.

To cut through the hype, NPR’s third segment interviews Dan Edmunds, director of vehicle testing at the auto research Website Edmunds.Com. Edmunds drove a flexible-fueled vehicle from San Diego to Las Vegas and back, first using E-10 and then using E-85 (motor fuel blended with 85% ethanol). He made the round trip with 36.5 gallons of gasoline. On E-85 it took 50 gallons — 37% more fuel to go the same distance. 

Public policy change typically requires odd-couple (“Baptist-Bootlegger“) alliances — a convergence of ideologically-motivated activists with bottom line-motivated business interests. That’s why demoting or even dethroning King Corn is now a real possibility. Ethanol’s fall from ideological grace among green activists and the mainstream media occurs at a time when powerful industry groups are either in open revolt against the King or are resisting his demands for additional privileges.

Rebels include the beef, poultry, hog, and dairy industries. They advocate repeal of the ethanol tariff and tax credit because those policies raise the price of corn, their basic feedstock, making them less competitive.

Earlier this week, several major U.S. oil refiners — direct beneficiaries of the blender’s credit, BTW — said they would not distribute E-15 despite EPA’s authorization to sell the fuel. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Valero Energy Corp., Marathon Oil Corp., and Tesoro Corp. contend that E-15  could harm older car and truck engines and void their warranties.

The Journal also noted that the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents General Motors, Ford, Toyota, and other auto companies “filed a petition with a U.S. appellate court in Washington on Monday challenging the EPA’s approval for the sale of gasoline containing 15% ethanol.”

The lame duck Congress renewed the ethanol tariff and tax credit for another year. But if Congress had debated the issue in 2009, the extension likely would have been for five years. That reflects the growing strength of the bipartisan, left-right, industry-activist anti-subsidy coalition.

A factor that should strengthen rebel forces — the incoming Congress will include many more fiscal conservatives than the one that just adjourned.

In Washington, D.C., Corn is King. Corn farmers receive all manner of farm subsidies: deficiency payments, direct payments, crop insurance premium subsidies, price support payments, counter-cyclical program support, and market loss assistance. Total price tag? More than $75.8 billion from 1995 to 2009, according to the Environmental Working Group.

But that’s not all. Corn is the main feedstock for the production of ethanol, and Congress props up the market for ethanol in three main ways. First, the so-called Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which is actually a Soviet-style production quota, compels refiners to blend increasing amounts of corn-ethanol into the nation’s motor fuel supply. Almost 12 billion gallons of corn ethanol will have to be sold as motor fuel in 2011. Under current law, 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol will have to be sold by 2015.

Lest anyone suppose this is a good deal for consumers, the government’s own data reveal that if you own a flexible-fueled vehicle, you spend hundreds of dollars a year more to fill up the tank with E-85 (motor fuel blended with 85% ethanol) than if you fill it with regular gasoline. The reason is that ethanol has about one-third less energy than an equal volume of gasoline. I document all this in my Pajamas Media column, Ethanol’s Policy Privileges: Heading into History”s Dustbin?

One difference between a Soviet-era production quota and the ethanol mandate is that Soviet planners only tried to dictate production levels for five years at a time — the infamous “five year plans.” Our Corn Commisars have an even worse case of the fatal conceit, because the RFS is a 14-year plan, spanning 2008-2022 (or a 16-year plan if we include the ethanol mandate Congress enacted in 2005).

So this component of King Corn’s empire may be with us for some time.

However, two other policy privileges — a 45¢ per gallon blender’s tax credit and a 54¢ per gallon protective tariff on Brazilian sugarcane ethanol — are scheduled to expire at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2010. A battle is now raging on Capitol Hill between defenders of the Statist Quo and a broad-based coalition of ethanol, food industry, humanitarian, taxpayer, and free market groups. The blender’s credit is refundable, meaning that it is paid by your tax dollars, to the tune of $6 billion a year. The Tariff prevents you from buying lower-priced cane ethanol, increasing your pain at the pump. The entire ethanol program inflates food prices, contributing to the hunger crisis of 2008, and has environmental impacts that rival or exceed any associated with petroleum consumption (see here, here, here, and here). For these and other reasons, the reform coalition says it’s time for the tariff and tax credit to face the grim reaper.

In the past, King Corn held sway almost without opposition. But the number and diversity of groups, policymakers, and opinion leaders calling for an end to the two special-interest giveaways is truly impressive. Some 60 organizations from across the political spectrum signed this letter urging Senate leaders to let the tax credit expire. And a bi-partisan group of 17 Senators signed this letter calling for an end to both special-interest giveaways.

On the House side, Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) has written a “dear colleague” letter that is now making the rounds:

Dear Colleague,
 
I hope you will join me in the sending the below letter urging an end to U.S. subsidies for corn ethanol and the tariff on imported ethanol.   Subsidizing the diversion of our nation’s food supply from food to fuel puts serious upward pressure on food prices – costs that create an unfair burden on working families.  I also wanted to draw your attention to today’s editorials on this issue:

New York Times
December 9, 2010
“Good Energy Subsidies, and Bad”
 
Washington Post
December 9, 2010
“Wasting tax dollars on ethanol”

Chicago Tribune
December 9, 2010
“End the binge: Aid to ethanol has gone on too long.”

To join this letter, please have your staff contact Jeremy Woodrum in my office at Jeremy.woodrum@mail.house.gov or (202) 225-3965.
Sincerely,
 
Joseph Crowley
Member of Congress
 
==================================
Nancy Pelosi
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
 
John Boehner
Minority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Dear Speaker Pelosi and Leader Boehner,

We want to express our strong opposition to extending the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) and the tariff on imported ethanol. 

This year, the U.S. will divert nearly 40 percent of the domestic corn crop from food and feed to fuel, which will contribute to already increasingly volatile and high commodity prices.  According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), corn ethanol production accounted for 10-15 percent of the increase in food prices between April 2007-April 2008 and $600-900 million in additional costs to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other child nutrition programs in 2009 alone.

Higher food prices hurt Americans, particularly those who can least afford it, such as those on public assistance and working families. 

In addition to escalating food and commodity prices, corn ethanol is not a cost-efficient way of achieving environmental benefits.  A July 2010 study by the CBO found that every gallon of ethanol used to replace gasoline costs the Federal government $1.78 – adding up to billions for American taxpayers.  Ethanol also does little to combat climate change, causing more global warming pollution than the gasoline it replaced. 

We believe it is time to end or significantly reduce the subsidy for corn ethanol and the tariff on imported ethanol.  We look forward to working with you to promote the development of truly sustainable advanced bio-fuels that meet both our food and environmental needs.

Sincerely,

Crowley’s letter concisely makes the key points. It also spotlights the fact that even the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune, all proponents of big-government liberalism, think it’s time to end the ethanol spending binge.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from five electric utilities in State of Connecticut v. American Electric Power.  The utilities are challenging an appellate court decision that the “political questions” doctrine does not bar states and other plaintiffs from suing emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2) for injuries alleged to result from CO2-induced global warming.

Troutman Sanders, a law firm with an extensive environmental practice, concisely summarize the history and basic issues of the case:

Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Second Circuit Global Warming Nuisance Case

December 6, 2010

In a victory for industry, the Supreme Court today granted a petition from a group of electric utilities for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Connecticut v. AEP.  The case concerns whether greenhouse gas emitters may be sued in tort on a theory that their emissions, by assertedly causing climate change, constitute a public nuisance. 

The lawsuit was originally brought in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by eight states, the City of New York and several environmental parties against five electric utilities.  The suit alleged that the companies’ coal-fired plant emissions were a significant cause of global warming and constituted a public nuisance actionable in tort.  The District Court dismissed the case in 2005, holding that the lawsuit presented a “political question” that was not appropriate for judicial resolution.  However, in September 2009, the Second Circuit overturned the District Court, found that the plaintiffs properly stated a cause of action for “public nuisance,” and rejected Defendants’ argument that Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gases displaced Plaintiffs’ federal common law nuisance claims.

Granting the petition for certiorari does not mean that the Court will overturn the Second Circuit decision, only that the Court will now consider the issues on the merits.  One development of note is that Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused herself from considering the petition and will undoubtedly also recuse herself from the merits decision.  Justice Sotomayor was on the Second Circuit panel that heard oral argument on Connecticut v. AEP, but recused herself from taking part in the Second Circuit’s decision after learning of her nomination to the Supreme Court. 

For more information, please visit our previous discussion of the Connecticut v. AEP case.

The case pits the States of Connecticut, New York, California, Iowa, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and three conservation groups against American Electric Power, Southern Company, Tennessee Valley Authority, Xcel Energy, Inc., and Cinergy Corporation.

 A victory for plaintiffs would be a boon to ambulance chasers throughout the land and, indeed, across the globe but a bane to the U.S. economy. It would also further erode what remains of our constitutional system of democratic accountability.

CO2 is the inescapable byproduct of the carbon-based fuels that power modern manufacturing, agriculture, and commerce. This means that classifying CO2 as a “public nuisance” has an enormous potential to endanger public health and welfare. The American Farm Bureau Federation put the point very well in an amicus brief on a related case (Comer et al. v. Murphy Oil et al.):

[B]ecause the production and use of fossil fuels and the attendant GHG emissions are so closely tied with all facets of modern life, a finding that using fossil fuels and emitting GHGs constitute a nuisance is akin to saying that modern life constitutes a nuisance. That may be true in some sense, but the necessary rejoinder is: compared to what? Certainly not as compared with pre-industrial society with preindustrial levels of atmospheric GHG concentrations. As Justice Breyer stated in his concurring opinion in Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass’ns, in the context of air pollution regulations designed to protect the public health, “[p]reindustrial society was not a very healthy society; hence a standard demanding the return of the Stone Age would not prove ‘requisite to protect the public health.’”

Like the politicians who assured an earlier generation of Americans that the income tax would apply only to the super rich, plaintiffs in AEP v. Connecticut say they just want to compel the nation’s biggest coal-burning utilities to cut their emissions. But once the precedent is established, there can be no principled basis for shielding any class of emitters from tort claims. As I explain in a column posted at PajamasMedia.Com:

If litigators can sue large utilities for emitting CO2, they can also sue smaller utilities and manufacturers. Indeed, they can in principle sue anyone and everyone. Utilities, after all, only emit CO2 in the process of serving customers who use electricity. People lighting their homes, powering their factories, and running their laptops are ultimately to blame for destroying the planet, according to the “science” invoked by plaintiffs. In their worldview, everybody is injuring everybody else — which implies that everybody has standing to sue everybody else. Plaintiffs may preach “green peace,” but they sow the seeds of a war of all against all.

Since global warming is, by definition, global, and since anyone anywhere on the planet who uses carbon-based energy, or consumes goods and services made or transported with carbon-based energy, contributes to CO2 emissions, both the pool of potential victims and the pool of alleged injurers number in the billions! This despite the fact that without carbon-based energy, billions of people on the planet would starve and/or freeze in the dark, and billions more would not even exist. Massachusetts v. EPA’s legacy of absurd results is small change compared to the Hobbesian nightmare the Court will bring into being if it decides Connecticut v. AEP in favor of plaintiffs.

If Connecticut et al. win, firms large and small will face the threat of interminable litigation, from a potentially limitless pool of plaintiffs, in which multiple courts, acting without benefit of statutory guidance, improvise remedies — both injunctive relief and damage awards — as they see fit. A victory for plaintiffs would, in short, destroy for many firms the legal predictability essential to business planning.  

In addition, climate policy would be made by decision-makers even less accountable than the non-elected bureaucrats at EPA, who at least depend on congressional appropriations for their budgets and salaries. We would have to live under Kyoto-like restrictions on energy use imposed neither by Congress nor by EPA but by trial lawyers and activist judges appointed for life.

In their lawsuit against the utilities, plaintiffs asked the lower court to fashion a remedy whereby the utilities would be required to reduce their CO2 emissions by a “specified percentage each year for at least a decade.” Such a “remedy” is legislative in nature and therefore beyond the competence of courts and juries, as the Justice Department argued in its amicus brief, submitted to the Supreme Court on half of the Tennessee Valley Authority:  

Establishing appropriate levels for the reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants by a “specified percentage each year for at least a decade” (as Plaintiffs request), would inevitably entail multifarious policy judgments, which should be made by decision-makers who are politically accountable, have expertise, and are able to pursue a coherent national or international strategy — either at a single stroke or incrementally.

No doubt plaintiffs once hoped the specter of CO2 litigation chaos would spook industry into supporting cap-and-trade as the lesser evil, just as they hoped the prospect of EPA regulation of greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act would tip the political scales in favor of Waxman-Markey. However, this greenhouse protection racket strategy of regulatory extortion has not worked and arguably even backfired, exposing greenhouse crusaders as self-righteous bullies. 

In November, angry voters punished supporters of the stealth energy tax formerly known as cap-and-trade. They’ll be even angrier if the Court empowers ambulance chasers to “enact” the job-killing, anti-energy policies they just rejected at the polls.

On Saturday (December 4, 2010), the Senate defeated a package of tax policy extensions, including a year extension of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) at $.36 per gallon, a 20 percent reduction from current levels.  In response, a diverse coalition of organizations issued a joint press release applauding the vote on the VEETC and explaining why the tax credit should not be renewed.

Here’s what the participants said:

 “A reduction in the corn ethanol tax credit is a small step in the right direction for animal agriculture and America’s taxpayers.  Burning a substantial portion of our food and feed as fuel is not a sustainable answer, in the long term, to solving this nation’s fuel needs.  Continuing to divert a significant portion of our corn crop into our fuel tanks will continue to increase costs for the meat and poultry industry and will result in higher food prices for consumers.” 
– J. Patrick Boyle, President and CEO, American Meat Institute

“The ethanol tax credit should be allowed to expire on schedule at the end of 2010.  In this period of huge deficits, there is no justification for the government’s losing billions of dollars in tax revenue to prop up an industry that already has a market required by law”
– George Watts, president of the National Chicken Council

“The VEETC will cost $4.75 billion next year alone, more than 2 times the roughly $2.25 billion in tax incentives for all other renewables in the tax extenders package. Not only is the VEETC bad fiscal policy, but it’s sucking all the oxygen out of our federal budget for renewables. This environmentally destructive handout to the oil industry means doing more harm than good when it comes to investing in clean energy and must be eliminated.”
– Nathanael Greene, Director of Renewable Energy Policy, Natural Resources Defense Council

“The blender’s credit and import tariff on foreign ethanol have distorted the corn market, creating needless volatility in the cost of animal feed.  Feed accounts for 70 percent of the total cost of raising a turkey, and corn is the single-largest ingredient in turkey feed.  The turkey industry has endured the deepest cutbacks of any in animal agriculture – a decrease in turkeys raised of more than 6 percent since 2007 levels and a near 9 percent reduction from 2008 levels – to adjust to these increased input costs. More importantly, the turkey industry eliminated nearly 3,000 jobs vital to rural America in 2008 and 2009 alone.”
 – Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation

“The federal government faces a projected deficit nearing $1.4 trillion next year, and yet some in Congress insist upon continuing to shell out billions through refundable tax credits to the ethanol industry. The time has come for Congress to end this wasteful practice and reduce burdens on taxpayers.”
 – Andrew Moylan, Director of Government Affairs, National Taxpayers Union

“While we believe a 20 percent reduction in the corn ethanol tax credit is a step in the right direction, spending $3.8 billion next year alone for conventional biofuels is still too much.  Today’s vote gives the Senate another chance to get this policy right, by further reducing or eliminating both the corn ethanol tax credit and import tariff.  We look forward to working with Congress to promote the development of truly sustainable advanced biofuels.”
– Geoff Moody, Manager, Federal Affairs, Grocery Manufacturers Association

“A growing choir of voices agrees: the Senate must pony up and end the subsidy for dirty corn ethanol for good.  When people across the country are having a hard time putting food on the table, welfare to millionaires and polluting corporations alike is unacceptable.   It’s impossible to justify wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on an industry that is bad for the environment and bad for the economy.”
– Kate McMahon, Biofuels Campaign Coordinator, Friends of the Earth

“With the national debt fast approaching parity with the GDP, now is not the time to renew a wasteful subsidy for even one year. Nor should tax policies vital to the nation’s economic recovery be held hostage to a special-interest giveaway. The November elections were a rebuke to fiscal irresponsibility in Washington. The lame duck Congress can show that it got the message by letting the VEETC meet its statutorily appointed fate.”
– Marlo Lewis, Senior Fellow in Environmental Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute

“It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars a year on a fuel that does little to reduce America’s dependence on oil but does a lot to exacerbate soil erosion, water pollution and habitat destruction across the Corn Belt,”
– Craig Cox, Senior Vice President, Environmental Working Group
 
“Congress needs to scrap plans to extend VEETC.  This is an outdated and wasteful policy that does nothing for our energy security or environment.  With all the other critical funding needs facing the country, giving the oil industry billions of taxpayer dollars to follow the law just doesn’t make sense.”
 – Brendan Bell, Union of Concerned Scientists

“Reducing the corn ethanol tax credit is a step in the right direction.  However, allowing the ethanol tax credit to expire at the end of 2010 creates greater certainty for the grain industry. Other grains, including wheat, may increasingly be in shorter supply as the nation continues losing wheat acreage and market volatility remains high,”
– Robb MacKie, president and CEO, American Bakers Association

“Organizations from vastly different sides of the political spectrum have come together and said in a clear voice: it’s time to stop – not slow down – this policy of throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at an activity that serves little, if any, public benefit.  By creating huge incentives for corn to make its way to ethanol plants rather than be available to consumers and livestock, we are sacrificing our nation’s food independence while doing nothing to reduce our nation’s energy independence.  The time to stop this insanity is now.”
– Rob Vandenheuvel, Milk Producers Council

 “The American Frozen Food Institute commends the Senate for rejecting the continuation of a special-interest tax break that saddles food producers with higher costs and drives up prices for consumers in the check-out aisle.”
– Kraig R. Naasz, president and CEO, American Frozen Food Institute
 
“The wasteful and environmentally-damaging subsidy for corn ethanol should expire, as scheduled, at the end of 2010. The broad alliance calling for ending this taxpayer giveaway underscores the fact that it is the right thing to do for our nation’s fiscal health, our environment, and our food security.”
– Sara Chieffo, Deputy Legislative Director, League of Conservation Voters

“We welcome continued scrutiny of this wasteful tax subsidy, which in appropriately supports the water pollution and high-volume water use associated with corn ethanol production. Clean Water Action will continue to support energy choices that make protection of water resources a priority.”
– Lynn Thorp, National Campaigns Coordinator, Clean Water Action

“It’s time for the subsidy party for ethanol to end. Instead of giving taxpayers a lump of coal by wasting billions of dollars more on this failed policy, lawmakers should concentrate on ways to eliminate wasteful spending.”
 – Steve Ellis, Vice President, Tax Payers for Common Sense

This morning’s Pajamas Media.Com carries a column by yours truly entitled, “Ethanol’s Policy Privileges: Heading for History’s Dustbin?” With links to the relevant studies, the piece explains why Congress should let the ethanol tariff and tax credit expire when their statutory authority runs out at midnight, Dec. 31, 2010.

The most fun I had writing the op-ed was in debunking the propaganda that ethanol’s policy privileges ease our pain at the pump. My evidence? None other than www.fueleconomy.gov, a Web site jointly administered by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation. Fueleconomy.Gov shows that if you own any one of 110-plus “flexible fueled” vehicles, you pay hundreds of dollars more per year if you fill the tank with E-85 (motor fuel blended with 85% ethanol) than if you fill it with regular gasoline.

The column also argues that, even if one believes in Al Gore’s “planetary emergency,” the ethanol tariff and tax credit are at best horribly inefficient and at worst counter-productive as climate policy.

Not that I disagree with everything Al Gore says. As noted in the column, Mr. Gore now acknowledges that his previous support for ethanol subsidies was a mistake, noting their contribution to the food price crisis of 2008. Gore says he “had a certain fondness for the [corn] farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president” in 2000. As comedian Bill Maher  once quipped, “No one asked for corn in their gas tank. . .But I suppose if the first presidential primary was in Vermont, we would all be pouring maple syrup into our gas tanks.”

“Corn is King” has been the statist quo for many years in farm state politics — hence also in Washington, D.C. But the times they are a-changin. A bipartisan group of 17 senators, led by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), say it’s time for the tariff and tax credit to go gently into the night. A broad coalition of environmental, taxpayer, hunger, free market, and food industry organizations are urging House and Senate leaders to let the tax subsidy meet its statutorily appointed fate.

The lame-duck Congress has a rare opportunity to avoid $25-30 billion in new deficit spending over the next five years, ease consumers’ pain at the pump, and scale back political manipulation of energy markets just by letting two special-interest giveaways tumble into history’s dustbin. They can do good just by doing nothing — surely there’s a lesson in that too.