Even when folks are confused about why this is so. [via Cafe Hayek]

Our current policy is absurd even by Washington standards: Congress is paying billions in subsidies to get us to use more ethanol, while keeping in place tariffs and quotas that guarantee that we’ll use less.

Fake out. It's a good thing that we use less since it makes no energy or environmental sense to use ethanol at all. It's even more absurd than Surowiecki realizes because he drank the Kool-Aid.

In recent years, as politicians have tried to deal with high gas prices, concerns about global warming, and America’s dependence on OPEC, a new savior has been found: ethanol. Ethanol has all sorts of virtues. When it’s blended with gasoline, it reduces greenhouse-gas emissions. Unlike fossil fuels, it doesn’t get depleted over time, since it’s made from biomass. And sources of ethanol can be found all over the world, unlike those of oil, which are mostly in unstable or autocratic countries that are unfriendly to the U.S.

All either false or soon to be false.

Politicians are not trying to deal with high gas prices, they even talk of raising them via taxation. What politicians do is pander to biases by talking about problems and claiming that the absurd things that they do will help in some way, while they really only grease their supporters.

Ethanol will not help one bit with global warming. If every vehicle on the planet used ethanol we'd still have the same threat of climate change, a growing threat as population grows half again as large as it is now and developing countries develop.

America isn't dependent on OPEC. Its major suppliers of fossil fuels are staunch enemies like Canada and Mexico. More importantly, oil is fungible. There is one large market for the commodity and it really doesn't matter where it comes from since it all sloshes around the world. If we don't buy OPEC oil then others will be happy to do so.

Ethanol arguably does not reduce green house emissions at all when made using current technologies. There is some dispute and a lot of fudging about what costs should be attributed to ethanol. It may be a very slightly lower source of GHGs, but more than compensates through environmental destruction.

"Unlike fossil fuels, it doesn’t get depleted over time, since it’s made from biomass." This assumes that biomass is a magical substance that has no better uses and is available in infinite amounts with no costs. All false. In fact it competes with food and fiber for agricultural land, a problem that will become more pressing as the demand for food doubles in coming decades. Let them drink ethanol?

But this is the most nonsensical bit: "sources of ethanol can be found all over the world, unlike those of oil, which are mostly in unstable or autocratic countries that are unfriendly to the U.S." As with any other commodity high demand will destabilize producers and increase the likelihood of social unrest and autocracy. We will have the pleasure of watching changes already in progress as developing countries mechanize agriculture to exploit this market, driving people from the land to squat on the fringes of mega-cities, as is happening in Brazil, and destroying their environments, such as rain forests, as is happening in Brazil and Indonesia.

In future we may see more cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from all sorts of trash and wastes rather than just sugars and starches. For example, the whole corn plant rather than just the grain would be used, and other sources such as wastes from forest cleanup and urban refuse would be viable feed stocks. That's the plan, the target, and would make every one of Surowiecki's mistaken points truly irrelevant.

Still, he is dead right that "our current policy is absurd even by Washington standards". But it won't help at all to play the game, to prescribe politicized solutions that pander to a different constituency rather than reasoning from evidence to formulate sensible policies. It isn't enough to recognize that current policy has flaws. It's a necessary first step, but no help if the next steps are false. One forward, one back, and a lot of sideways - at best a drunkard's stagger but with less progress.