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In the US, isn't the main lobbying on behalf of this coming from industrial agriculture that has become addicted to the renewable fuel standard, which mandates that ethanol be added to gasoline, providing welfare for the ethanol industry at the expense of petroleum refiners (and eventually the driving public)? A good first step to end this idea would be to drop the mandate the same way the subsidies and tariffs supporting ethanol production were dropped.

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That will require a constitutional change, as the makeup of the Senate makes it impossible to make such a reform barring a significant economic change.

It’s either that or the depletion of aquifers.

I'm afraid you haven't made clear what constitutional change you mean, at least to me. Can you elaborate?

He's referring to the fact that a bunch of low population states in middle America are the ones that benefit from all those corn-based biofuel mandates, and the fact that every state gets two senators irregardless of population means that these middle states get an oversized influence on the annual farm bill. The constitutional change would be changing the makeup of the senate.

(This is what I infer his argument to be. There are a million other ways to solve this problem besides changing the senate.)

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