Federal Forests, Biomass, and Ethanol: Energy Security Sabotaged

摘要

Corporate interests are responsible for the inefficiencies in the nation's forestry and energy policies. Legislators painted the HFRA, the EPAct, and the EISA in broad strokes, and left the implementation to the uSDA, knowing its industry bias full well.189 As some commentators have noted, when policies are incompatible, "greater local political influence may prevail over sound policy."190 As much as happened in this case, as farm and timber industries have turned the current ethanol industry into "a classic government boondoggle, benefit-ting selected constituencies and providing few genuine public benefits." This favoritism now works to prevent an effective synthesis of forestry and energy policies.rnThe technology and resources now exist to formulate complementary forestry and energy policies that would benefit the nation as a whole. Legislators have the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. It would be a shame if corporate interests caused them to miss intentionally.