Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) this week proposed an amendment to an Interior Appropriations bill to cut off funding to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) waiver process unless the agency subverts its own scientific review process and immediately allows 50% more corn ethanol to be blended into the national gasoline supply.

In a word, blackmail.

Fortunately, the amendment did not make it to the final list of amendments agreed upon today by Senate leaders (E and E Subscription Required).

A major hurdle for the politically well-connected ethanol lobby has been proving its fuel is environmentally sound. The debate has raged about Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), technical jargon for factoring in the climate-damaging gases that will be released when forests or grasslands are plowed under and planted with crops to make up for the corn used to make ethanol. When EPA scientists factor in indirect land use change, as they are required to do by law, it turns out corn ethanol likely increases rather than decreases greenhouse-gas emissions.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson effectively neutered ILUC in the concessions he extracted from the House climate bill. The ethanol industry's consternation over ILUC is hard to comprehend, however, since Congress already made sure corn ethanol was protected from any scientific assessment of its impact on the environment when it passed the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

The real reason for blackmailing EPA is that corn ethanol producers have no market for their 15 billion gallons of grandfathered corn ethanol. Despite lavish federal subsidies and tax breaks, the ethanol industry has struggled to remain financially viable. During the debate over a federal stimulus bill, the ethanol industry lobbied for bailout funds, but withdrew their request in the face of intense media scorn. Senator Nelson's move intends to force EPA into granting a request to increase the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline by 50%, thus dramatically expanding the market for the floundering industry.

Claims by the ethanol industry that EPA's assessments are unfair are misguided, not only because most ethanol is grandfathered in under EPA rules, but also because ethanol is mandated for use. The real fear is that increasing the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline by 50% will have catastrophic environmental impacts. The rush to plant more corn for ethanol has already choked rivers and streams with toxic fertilizers and pesticides, leading to the growth of the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. Wildlife habitat is plowed under at an alarming rate and air quality is degraded all to produce a fuel that's production in all likelihood contributes to climate change.

It is hard to fathom that at a time of environmental crisis our senators are willing to defund the EPA's effectiveness because the agency won't look the other way and mandate the use of more environmentally damaging fuel. This spurred us to produce the above image, a riff on the iconic National Lampoon cover pasted below.

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