Nevertheless, farm-state Democrats like Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois continue to tout biofuels as greener alternatives to fossil fuels. California under Gov. Gavin Newsom has promoted crop-based fuels through its “Low Carbon Fuel Standard,” even though corn ethanol and soy biodiesel are much higher-carbon than gasoline or conventional diesel. And while a few environmental groups have denounced Trump’s latest favors for the industry, most of the environmental community has remained silent, even as they’ve trashed Trump’s other environmental sins.
I get it. Fighting the farm lobby can feel like a waste of time and political capital. But biofuels are an excellent fight to pick, and now that they’re poised for a gigantic growth spurt in the U.S. and abroad, this would be an excellent time to pick it. Most farmers don’t vote for Democrats anyway. Agricultural expansion is an enormous environmental problem, driving biodiversity loss, nutrient pollution, water shortages, and climate change. And at a time when Americans are furious about high food prices — which helped Trump get elected, and have helped make him unpopular — biofuels mandates are specifically designed to increase the cost of things farmers sell and consumers buy.
None of this will persuade Trump or his Republican lackeys, who don’t care about the climate or the rainforests and won’t do anything to offend their farmer base or agribusiness donors. But it is way past time for serious people who know that biofuels are an insidious boondoggle to start fighting to stop the madness. I’m specifically thinking of three groups that should suit up for battle:
Democrats. There used to be a lot of rural Democrats. There also used to be a deal in Washington: Urban Democrats supported biofuels and other farm goodies as long as Republicans supported food stamps. But rural America is now overwhelmingly Republican, and the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act blew up the deal, gutting food stamps while blasting even more cash into farm socialism; it even included language ensuring biofuels could still qualify for new subsidies no matter how much they expanded agriculture into nature. So why do Democrats continue to support these environment-wrecking handouts for rich farmers who will never vote for them? Maybe it’s understandable that a corn-state Democrat like Klobuchar is now clamoring to permanently increase the ethanol levels in U.S. gasoline from 10% to 15% in order to cushion the blow from soaring gas prices — though she was clamoring for that long before gas prices were soaring — but why isn’t the rest of the party saying no?
Democrats need a new approach to agriculture, focused less on the 1% of Americans who farm and more on the 100% who eat. That would mean redistributing less money from ordinary taxpayers to the biggest farmers who grow the most common row crops, while also opposing the tariffs, price supports, and biofuel mandates that raise prices at the supermarket. Let Trump stand for giving farmers “much better than a level playing field.” Democrats should stand with everybody else.
Environmentalists. Green groups enthusiastically supported the original Renewable Fuel Standard in 2005, back when biofuels looked like an eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels. To their credit, most of them stopped pushing farm-grown fuels after Searchinger’s science revealed their downsides. European enviros have actually fought back, successfully limiting crop-based fuels on the continent’s roads and excluding them from “sustainable aviation” mandates. But while a few American groups have also sounded alarms — most notably Friends of the Earth, Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the World Resources Institute — most have been silent, or have lobbied for relatively modest tweaks to state and federal mandates. I found no mention of Trump’s latest expanded biofuels mandate on the websites of the Natural Resources Defense Council, World Wildlife Fund, or Environmental Defense Fund, even though it will have a big impact on natural resources, wildlife, and the environment.
This strategy is designed to avoid alienating the powerful farm lobby, even though Big Ag routinely fights environmentalists over climate, wetlands, toxic chemicals, and other issues. And the strategy hasn’t entirely backfired; although biofuels quickly seized about 3% of the global fuel market by 2010, their market share has remained stagnant ever since. But that’s mostly because of the rise of electric vehicles, and the new push for biofuels in planes and ships, which can’t be easily electrified, is a huge new threat to nature and the climate. That’s what enviros are supposed to fight for, even if it means fighting Big Ag.
International institutions. In “We Are Eating the Earth,” I quote several scientists who worked on IPCC reports complaining that their panels were stacked with biofuels advocates who fought desperately to make sure the fuels were endorsed as climate solutions. Someone could write a whole book about that alone, but the long story short is that IPCC reports tend to point out that critics believe crop-based biofuels won’t reduce emissions at all, while supporters believe biofuels can reduce ludicrously massive amounts of emissions — and then suggest the world should aim for something in between to achieve its net-zero goals, which still amounts to a pro-biofuels stance. The IEA and other global institutions have taken a similar approach.
The scientists who still claim biofuels are good for the climate tend to assume they’ll make food so expensive that poor people won’t be able to afford as much meat, which would be bad; or that higher crop prices will miraculously enable farmers to grow way more crops without using more land, which isn’t grounded in empirical reality; or that farmers who do clear more land will somehow avoid carbon-rich forests, which is more wishful thinking. The science is clear, even if it isn’t comforting. It’s true that net-zero will be much harder to achieve if we can’t assume emissions reductions from biofuels. Unfortunately, we can’t, and the sooner credible institutions recognize that, the better.
So that’s my advice. Democrats should stop trying to suck up to farmers who will never love them back. Enviros should stop shying away from a war with Washington’s most powerful lobby. And climate institutions should abandon the most politically popular climate solution even though it will make climate progress look even less achievable.