It is my understanding that environmentalists never pushed for biofuels at scale. Biofuels make sense at a very limited scale where you use waste to produce fuel, eg pressing sawdust into wood pellets, or making biogas from manure.
Not to mention using up excess corn that we don't have room to store (predicting corn yield is hard), which is why the whole corn-based ethanol thing got going.
But in normal human fashion we took what is a decent idea at limited scale and thought we could make it an even better idea if we scaled it up to ridiculous proportions. And in normal human fashion, instead of realizing our mistake in not applying some moderation, now we're convinced that what is a bad idea at ridiculous proportions must be eliminated entirely...
Yes of course biofuels make sense on a limited scale in certain applications. Pellet stoves are a good example.
But I don't think I've seen many Environmentalist(TM) proposals that were anything less than a wholesale replacement of "fossil fuels" (and other "extractive industries") for all things everywhere.
I miss the good old days when they just wanted to save the whales, before they came to believe they were saving the whole goddamn planet from certain doom.
