From Population Bomb to Ethanol Mandates

Photo by Wouter Supardi Salari on Unsplash

When I was in college around 1970, one of the books that shaped how many thought about the future was The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. The central fear then was stark and urgent: humanity was growing faster than the planet’s ability to feed itself. Mass starvation, we were told, was not a distant possibility but an approaching certainty unless something changed.

Whether Ehrlich’s predictions would prove right or wrong is beside the point. What mattered was the anxiety that framed the era. Food was precious. Arable land was finite. Population growth threatened to overwhelm fragile systems. Feeding people was the overriding concern.   

Fast-forward a few decades, and the picture has shifted in ways I never would have imagined back then. Today, the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone. And yet hundreds of millions of people remain food insecure, many of them acutely so. Hunger has not disappeared; it has simply become chronic, unevenly distributed, and easier to ignore unless it erupts into crisis.

At the same time, something else has happened—something that strikes me as strange. Vast amounts of productive farmland, particularly in the United States, are no longer devoted primarily to feeding people, but to growing corn that is converted into ethanol. This ethanol is then blended into gasoline—not to replace it, but to dilute it. We are using food-producing land, water, fertilizer, and energy to marginally extend a fuel supply, all in the name of energy independence.

This is where the dissonance creeps in.

I’ve written before about the ethanol debate and the political enthusiasm that surrounded it, especially after the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Ethanol was sold as a clean, patriotic solution to foreign oil dependence. And once embraced, it quickly became politically untouchable. Powerful agricultural and industrial interests ensured that mandates stayed in place, even as questions mounted about ethanol’s true energy balance and environmental benefits.

But step back from the technical arguments for a moment and look at the larger picture. We once worried that there wouldn’t be enough food. Now we grow food to burn it. This is weird to me. 

I don’t mean that as a slogan or a condemnation. It’s simply an observation—one that feels increasingly difficult to square with the world as it is. In many parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, food insecurity is not theoretical. It shapes daily life. It fuels migration, political instability, and despair. And yet it rarely stays in our media spotlight for long. Hunger that is constant does not make for compelling headlines.

What we see instead are debates about fuel blends, mileage standards, and subsidy structures—important questions, perhaps, but questions that often unfold in isolation from broader human consequences.

None of this suggests that biofuels are inherently evil, or that farmers are villains, or that energy transitions are unnecessary. It does suggest, however, that priorities can drift in subtle ways. Policies designed for one moment can harden into assumptions, even when the conditions that gave rise to them have changed.

Perhaps what unsettles me most is not the existence of ethanol mandates, but how little we seem to reflect on their implications.* We live in a world where hunger persists alongside abundance, where farmland feeds engines while people go without, and where the moral weight of those choices is rarely discussed.

Back in 1970, we were taught to fear a future defined by scarcity. Today, the problem looks different. It is not that we lack resources. It's that we struggle to decide what they are for. And that, to my mind, is a far more troubling question.

* * * 

When I considered the title for this post I was tempted to replace the word Mandates with Madness. I left it as is because I didn't want to be accused of having a clickbait title. The topic is too important to be trivial about it.

* * * 

IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE

*Another negative feature of blending ethanol into gasoline has to with how it damages small engines due to "phase separation." Phase separation in ethanol-blended gasoline occurs when the ethanol absorbs moisture from the air or environment, causing the fuel to split into two layers: a water-ethanol mixture at the bottom and pure gasoline on top. This happens more readily in humid conditions or during long storage periods.

            The problem for small engines, like those in lawnmowers, chainsaws, or boats, is that the watery layer can corrode metal parts, clog fuel lines, and cause starting issues or engine failure. The separated gasoline lacks octane, leading to poor performance and premature death. Using ethanol-free fuel or specialized additives helps prevent this damage, but you seldom hear anyone talking about this.