Say you take the car to the transmission shop, and the man says the CV joint needs to be replaced. Then he discovers the timing chain also is about to go. What do you do?
It would feel good to say, “You said the CV joint was broken. Fix that, and I’m not paying a dime more.” But 20 miles down the road, when your car is destroyed, you will realize it was a grave mistake.
That is about where we are on biofuels. We never should’ve let government drive the energy supply car. All the warnings – that government can’t pick winners and losers, that subsidies distort the market, that artificially created demand is not the same as market demand – have come true with a vengeance. But now that we have let government establish these policies, we must finish the job.
American petroleum refiners say they are facing fines of $6.8 million because in 2011 they failed to mix a certain percentage of cellulosic biofuels into their gasoline and diesel products as prescribed by law.