Against scientific evidence, against public opinion and against common sense, the EPA has raised the level of ethanol it will require in American cars and trucks in 2016. But corn producers, who profit from the Renewable Fuel Standards, are unsatisfied.

It’s time for Congress and the EPA to stand up to the corn lobby and ditch the RFS once and for all.

“The Obama administration is requiring more ethanol be blended into the country’s gasoline compared to an earlier proposal, but the increase was widely criticized by renewable fuel and corn producers that have pushed hard for the White House to adhere to much more aggressive targets set by Congress nearly a decade ago,” USA Today reports. “The EPA said refiners will be required to blend 18.11 billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2016, an increase from the agency’s 17.4 billion gallons proposed in May, but well below the 22.25 billion target set by Congress. The increase is largely reflective of rising gasoline consumption tied to low pump prices.”

Those targets were set, as USA Today notes, a decade ago. But what we know now is that ethanol is awful – for the cars, for the economy and for the environment.

Growing evidence has shown ethanol isn’t the green fuel we hoped for. Recently, a team of scientists report that, on balance, ethanol has been a net negative for the environment.

“A 10-year review of the US Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) by researchers at the University of Tennessee (UT) found that the RFS is ‘too reliant’ on corn ethanol, and the production of this biofuel is resulting in additional water and soil problems, as well as ‘hampering advancements’ in other biofuels,” the website Clean Technica reported in October. “Over the course of the last 10 years, corn ethanol has been lauded as being a bridge fuel solution that could reduce air pollution and increase national energy security in the U.S.”

But corn-based ethanol hasn’t lived up to the hype.

“Corn ethanol hasn’t lived up to its promise as being a cleaner and more environmentally friendly fuel choice, even after an estimated $50 billion in subsidies, in part because of some of the ‘hidden’ costs of ethanol production, and this focus on corn ethanol has lead to a stagnated advanced biofuels industry, according to researchers,” the website wrote.

To be more specific, ethanol doesn’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because it takes tractors and other industrial processes to produce it.

“Academic studies have shown that (ethanol) could actually contribute ‘to a sharp and overall increase of GHGs,’ and that ethanol production and use ‘emits more particulate matter, ozone (as well as other smog precursors), and other air pollutants than gasoline,'” the report added.

So why is the EPA so intent on forcing ethanol into our gas tanks?

In part, it’s because of where the first-in-the-nation primaries are held – Iowa. That has meant, in the past, that candidates have meekly acquiesced to Iowan farmers’ demands for support of the RFS.

Maybe it’s time to hear where the current candidates stand.