In his 2006 State of the Union message, President G.W. Bush famously (and falsely) declared that America is “addicted to oil.” As a solution, Bush proposed to “fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass.” He set a “goal” to ”make this new kind of ethanol [a.k.a. cellulosic] practical and competitive within six years.”

Congress heeded the call, and in late 2007 passed the Energy Independence and Security Act. EISA mandated the sale of 36 gallons of biofuel by 2022, with 21 billion gallons to come from ”advanced” (lower-carbon) biofuels, of which 16 billion gallons must be cellulosic.

Well, it’s now six years later, and cellulosic ethanol is still a taxpayer-subsidized science project. EISA (p. 32) required refiners to sell 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2010, 250 million gallons in 2011, and 500 million gallons in 2012. Reality repeatedly forced the EPA to dumb down the mandated quantities (to 6.5 million gallons in 2010, 6.0 million in 2011, and 8.65 million in 2012). Even those symbolic targets proved to be too ambitious, because, as a commercial commodity, cellulosic biofuel still does not exist.

Nonetheless, the EPA fines refiners millions of dollars for failure to sell this non-existent fuel. Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake has a commonsense solution, H.R. 6047, the Phantom Fuel Reform Act.

Rep. Flake’s one-pager explains the bill’s rationale and how the reform would work. In a nutshell, next year’s cellulosic target would have to be based on this year’s actual production, as estimated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. From the one-pager:

The Problem

• [C]ommercially available cellulosic biofuel does not exist.  In fact, the Congressional Research Service reported this year that the federal government projects that this phantom fuel is “not expected to be commercially viable on a large scale until at least 2015.”
• Even though commercially available cellulosic biofuel does not exist, U.S. energy producers are faced with a vexing ultimatum: buy millions of dollars of EPA paper “credits” or face hefty fines.
• By February 2013, U.S. energy producers will have paid more than $14 million to the EPA for these phantom fuel credits.

The Commonsense Fix

• Under current law, the independent Energy Information Administration (EIA) must submit to the EPA by October 31st of each year an estimate of projected volume of cellulosic biofuel to be produced in the upcoming calendar year.
• The Phantom Fuel Reform Act would simply require that:
  (1) The EIA base that projection on the actual volume of cellulosic biofuel produced between January 1st and October 31st, and
  (2) The EPA’s annual cellulosic biofuel mandate reflects the EIA’s more realistic production-based projection.

The Benefits

• Passage of H.R. 6047, the Phantom Fuel Reform Act, would prevent millions of dollars in needless and unnecessary energy costs from being placed on U.S. energy producers and passed onto American consumers.
• It would stop the EPA from forcing U.S. energy producers to choose between buying meaningless compliance or paying hefty federal fines.
• H.R. 6047 would maintain the existence of the cellulosic biofuel mandate while ensuring that it reflects actual industry production rather than unrealistic bureaucratic prediction.

It’s a trick employed by rhetoricians from time immemorial. When their case against an opponent is unpersuasive on the merits, they invoke the image of something their target audience fears or hates. Thus, for example, political pleaders have asserted that money, Dick Cheney, or Zionism ”is a cancer on the body politic.”

Perhaps the most influential use of this tactic in modern times is the attack on carbon dioxide (CO2) as “global warming pollution” and on CO2 emitters as “polluters.” Many who know better, including highly credentialed scientists, routinely couple the words “carbon” and “pollution” in their public discourse.

In reality, CO2 — like water vapor, the atmosphere’s main greenhouse gas — is a natural constituent of clean air. Colorless, odorless, and non-toxic to humans at 30 times ambient concentrations, CO2 is an essential building block of the planetary food chain. The increase in the air’s CO2 content since the dawn of the industrial revolution — from 280 to 390 parts per million – boosts the water-use efficiency of trees, crops, and other plants; helps protect green things from the damaging effects of smog and UV-B radiation; and helps make food more plentiful and nutritious. The many health and welfare benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment make CO2 unlike any other substance ever previously regulated as a “pollutant.”

A closely related abuse of the English languge is the oft-repeated claim that America is “addicted to oil.” Although popularized by a Texas oil man, former President G.W. Bush, the phrase is a rhetorical staple of the same folks who inveigh against “carbon pollution.” NASA scientist James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous carbonophobe besides Al Gore, recently denounced the Keystone XL Pipeline as a “dirty needle” that, if approved, would feed our supposed oil addiction.

President Obama is expected later this year to approve or deny a permit allowing construction of the proposed 1,700 mile pipeline that would bring oil from Canada’s vast tar sands reserves to U.S. refineries in the Midwest and Gulf Coast. As reported in The New York Times, Hansen said that Obama has a rare opportunity, by denying the permit, to show that he is not a “hopeless addict.”

“If Obama chooses the dirty needle it will confirm that Obama was just greenwashing all along, like the other well-oiled coal-fired politicians, with no real intention of solving the addiction,” Hansen said.

Why does anyone listen to Hansen? Because he’s a highly credentialed scientist. But when he says stuff like this, he is only pretending to speak as a scientist. He is actually speaking as a political advocate, and with scant regard for facts or reason.

America is no more addicted to oil than our ancestors were to horse fodder. We use oil, as they used fodder, to get us where we want to go. What consumers care about is not the oil or the fodder, but the mobility it provides and the associated costs. Yes, those costs include environmental impacts. But, mile for mile, a horse is a far more polluting ‘technology’ than an automobile. As soon as an alternative fuel comes along that delivers more bang for our transportation buck than gasoline does, Americans will demand it, and competition will drive profit-seeking firms to supply it.

Yes, we depend on oil to fuel most of our cars, marine vessels, and aircraft. But dependence is not addiction. We also depend on electricity to power our lap tops, iPods, and cell phones, and we depend on food and water to sustain life. No sane person would say we are addicted to those things.

One quality of a typical addiction is that it is an appetite that grows with feeding. Nationally, our long-term oil consumption is growing. But that’s  due to population growth, which increases the number of motorists, and economic growth, which increases the supply of goods to be moved and expands opportunities to travel for business, education, and recreation. The long-term increase in “vehicle miles traveled” is not the result of some narcotic-like effect that gasoline consumption induces in motorists. It is a consequence of healthy development — more abundant life and more economic activity.

As my colleague Myron Ebell once said, nobody in America wakes in a cold sweat, sneaks out of the house late at night, and pays a road side pusher top off the tank with regular unleaded.