The National Security Crowd was at it again on NRO’s main page yesterday (“The Hunger”), using current food inflation as an argument for its pet flex-fuel vehicle mandate. Our good friend Cliff May writes that “free market types (like me) are skeptical about both subsidies and tariffs,” and then makes the case for why we must force ethanol via government subsides and mandates.

Cliff continues to ignore the voluminous evidence presented by myself and others on Planet Gore as to why this is economic poppycock (read here, here, here, and here), but he also makes a novel argument that corn ethanol production is having nothing to do with world crop shortages and food inflation.

Citing statistics from pro-alcohol fuel zealot Robert Zubrin, Cliff suggests that the 30-percent diversion of the word’s’ biggest (U.S.) corn crop to fuel has had no effect on the world food market. Instead, he lays the blame at oil’s doorstep.

The Dept. of Agriculture disagrees.

Mark Rey, Bush’s appointee as Under Secretary of Natural Resources and the Environment, acknowledged last week in an interview with the Detroit News editorial board, that the ethanol mandate has contributed to serious market distortions. Rey would seem to have every incentive to deny this reality, given that his boss pushed through the very mandate that is causing these problems. But he doesn’t.

Still, while acknowledging corn ethanol’s unintended consequences, he tries to spin a happy ending.

He argues that cellulosic ethanol (ethanol made from all manner of discarded material from corn stalks to rubber shavings – and therefore not land intensive) will ultimately satisfy the ethanol mandate – not corn. It’s “about to go commercial” he promises.

Do you trust the same Washington advocates who missed corn ethanol’s downside as they now pronounce the new messiah, cellulosic?

Actually, Rey isn’t so cocky. He acknowledges, unlike the Zubrin Lobby, that ethanol is a “10 percent solution” to an oil future still dominated by oil. Let us count the ways:

The pipeline problem: Ethanol (or methanol or any of the biofuels) can’t be shipped by pipeline as gas is. That means, says Reys, that a vast infrastructure of trucks will have to deliver the stuff and big trucks, he acknowledges, are diesel dependent.

Refineries: The expense of non-pipeline delivery will likely necessitate more refineries closer to market sources, says Reys. And building refineries these days is about as popular with the public as an IRS audit.

Public acceptance: To work, cellulosic ethanol will have to be more than price competitive with gas – it will have to be 25 percent cheaper because a gallon of ethanol has but 70 percent of gas’s energy content.

As oil prices continue their stratospheric climb, numerous alternative fuel technologies are getting a fresh look. It’s a decision are better left to markets, rather than government decrees.