Statement on today’s EPA Biofuels: Administration “can’t even do the right thing for the wrong reasons”
Statement of Rose Garr, Campaign Director for Waxman Strategies, on the Renewable Fuel Volume Obligations (RVOs) announced by the EPA today:
This was a case where Trump should have done the right thing for the wrong reasons, but he managed to do the wrong thing anyway.
The EPA proposed in October to reduce consumption of polluting, food-based biofuels. But the volume rule issued today tethers us to corn ethanol and soy biodiesel while leaving cellulosic fuels to languish below last year’s levels. This approach is totally backward.
President Trump and Administrator Pruitt seem to have looked at the record-size dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the algal blooms and nitrate pollution across the Midwest, and the climate pollution coming from native ecosystems converted to crop production and decided to double down. I guess Trump found out that biofuels are even dirtier than dirty old oil and decided that he liked them even more.
Clearly, it’s time for Congressional leaders to tackle this issue head-on and reform the Renewable Fuel Standard. To protect the environment, we need to keep the best biofuels and lose the worst.
