If they’re not headed that way they should be.

Washington (AP) A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency says regulators will consider economic impact of renewable-fuel requirements when deciding whether to suspend rules on ethanol production.

Senate Republicans have asked environmental regulators to use their power to halt the country’s plans to expand ethanol production amid rising food prices. The agency has the power to waive or restructure federal requirements if they cause harm.

However, the spokesman says the Bush administration remains committed to ethanol as an alternative fuel because of its potential to get the country “off its addiction to foreign oil.”

Why anyone thought it was a good idea for the government to promote ethanol in the first place is beyond me.  The government, most certainly the federal government, was never intended to be involved in promoting certain products in the market and we are now seeing our founders felt that way.  Even the most ardent of ethanol apologists cannot deny that American biofuel subsidies and mandates are exacerbating the global food crisis, if not directly causing it.

Like any market, the energy market is vast and complex and simply cannot be controlled through the decisions of a handful of the political elite.  Instead, the energy market must be lead through the day-to-day decisions of hundreds of millions each making the best decisions they can based on their own self-interest.  The successor to petroleum-based fuels (if there is indeed to be a single successor) will not be chosen by politicians in our nation’s capitals but rather by we, the citizens.  And that decision will be the better one because it will be informed by the needs and interests of we individual citizens rather than the needs and interests of politicians which, far too often, are greatly influenced by lobbyists and big-money politicos.