When George W. Bush put out the challenge in his 2007 State of the Union address to vastly increase production of alternative forms of energy over the next decade—by more than five times—the United States corn industry was licking its lips. Experts said at the time that ethanol, a fuel derived mostly from corn, would be the only alternative fuel America could produce domestically at a scale that could meet Bush’s mandate. And produce they did, more than doubling U.S. production of ethanol from 6.5 billion gallons in 2007 to nearly 14 billion gallons in 2011. But rather than helping the environment by encouraging “cleaner, greener” ethanol, the production of the alternative fuel may be...
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