ROGER COHEN offers a nuanced view of biofuels, something that’s been in short supply lately: “I’ll grant that the fashion for biofuels led to excess, and that some farm-to-fuel-plant conversion, particularly in subsidized U.S. and European markets, makes no economic or environmental sense. But biofuels remain very much part of the solution. It just depends which biofuels.”

And this is clearly right: “Right now, the biofuel market is being grossly distorted by subsidies and trade barriers in the United States and the European Union. . . . What sense does it make to have a surplus of environmentally friendly Brazilian sugar-based ethanol with a yield eight times higher than U.S. corn ethanol and zero impact on food prices being kept from an American market by a tariff of 54 cents on a gallon while Iowan corn ethanol gets a subsidy?”

Drop the tariff, drop the subsidies, let the market do it. (Via The Drawn Cutlass).