JEFF DUNETZ: Corn Continues To Thrive In The Swamp.

For more than a decade, the federal government’s Renewable Fuel Standard has required refineries to blend biofuels into their gasoline. The most popular biofuel by far is ethanol derived from corn. It has accounted for 87 percent of the RFS’s blending requirements since 2007.

The architects of the RFS claimed it would benefit the environment. When burned, ethanol produces fewer carbon emissions than traditional gasoline. So if car drivers started using ethanol blends en masse, America’s emissions would drop dramatically — or so corn lobbyists claimed.

In reality, ethanol blends have harmed, not helped, the environment. About 40 percent of the American corn supply is now devoted to ethanol. Farmers have converted previously untouched prairies into corn fields to meet the demand for the crop. Ethanol’s total emissions — including those from corn production — are 28 percent higher than emissions from regular gasoline, according to the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force.

Worse, the chemical runoff from the fertilizer used to grow ethanol crops despoils waterways. Runoff around the Gulf of Mexico has created a Massachusetts-sized “dead zone” totally uninhabitable to marine life.

But: “Last month, President Donald Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow the year-round sale of gasoline that contains 15 percent ethanol.”

Dumb.