Environmental Disaster: The Renewable Fuel Standard
Capital Research Center
The bipartisan disaster called the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has all the usual characteristics of bureaucratic central planning: It features unrealistic (actually, impossible) goals, hidden taxes and regulatory burdens, and costly “unintended” consequences, and it’s carried out by anonymous, unelected, unaccountable government officials.
Meanwhile, RFS reduces the mileage of motor vehicles, funnels money from consumers to well-connected “crony capitalists,” raises the price of food for the world’s poor, destroys rain forest and wetlands, and expands a dead zone the size of Connecticut in the Gulf of Mexico.
It was supposed to make us more energy independent. It was supposed to protect the environment, yet it is responsible for converting millions of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat to corn plantations. Even the “greens” have turned against it. And, like many a horror-movie villain, it’s immortal. … Or is it?