Corn Ethanol on Chopping Block?

That is unless the experiment is all political. In order for ethanol to look like it reduces ghg, the lobby gets it counted without land use impact. Sure get rid of a factor and everything looks great, even coal. How does coal look if we remove the smoke stack emissions? Yep politics did that for awhile as well telling states to use coal instead of natural gas.

As for E15 not harming engines, the EPA did less work than carb. Manufacturers say long term use will void waranties including toyota. When you make something you don't expect a lobby to change the rules. You can't test it once and say, hey it didn't break, those engineering tollerances don't matter. We do have the instance of CARB doing the same lack of tests and harming thousands of truck engines.

Then why would you side with the mandate that higher percentage of ethanol need to be used than the market wants to use?

Because of the mandates that many more acres are planted. In bad crop years cars get fed before cattle because of a mandate. In brazil they change the amount based on quantity available (oil prices, sugar prices, oil availability, sugar availability). Lower the mandate and you would change some land use away from ethanol corn to other crops that may not require as much water and chemicals. I've got to say a good ear of corn during season is a great piece of human food, but when you convert it to hfcs, corn starch, etc as part of processed food its anouther matter.
+1

I'd say its the ethanol lobby, but yes, many of our farm subsidies go to huge corporations and hurt most americans including family farmers.