Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) was probably not a subject of your Thanksgiving dinner discussions. Nonetheless, only days earlier, a provision regarding MTBE was the primary factor in the 11^th hour U.S. Senate scuttling of this year’s energy bill.

After drilling in the ANWR paradise had been Bambied by the environmentalist whackos and our energy future relegated to the (short term) fantasies of hydrogen-powered vehicles and windmill ranches, it should come as scant surprise to inhabitants of our increasingly confrontational wonderland that litigation issues snuffed the rest.

To understand, even in a brief and oversimplified version of events, we must return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when, in 1990, amendments were made to the Clean Air Act, which, as we all know because your government tells us so, has kept most of us breathing the good stuff since its enactment in 1977.

Some of our countrymen, however, insisted on living in areas of heavy smog, generally ascribed to excessive ozone levels caused largely from the by-products of said habitation, including but not limited to the frequent movement of people and things in mechanized conveyances. As a result, the aforementioned amendments mandated reformulated gasoline (RFG) in those parts of the country most beset by smog.

The theory of RFG is that gasoline additives known as oxygenates reduce ozone-forming emissions, thus improving air quality. Your government insisted on two percent oxygen content by weight in RFG. There are currently only two oxygenates that are deemed practical for widespread usage: MTBE and ethanol.

Whether RFG actually produces air quality improvements that could not otherwise be achieved by other gasoline blends and technological advances is questionable. Regardless, for a number of reasons, including cost, availability, stability in transportation and storage, the time factors of the mandate and what some might now describe as the irrational exuberance of the EPA, MTBE became the oxygenate, if not of choice, of least resistance.

For a while, all cylinders of those pesky old vehicles were firing, albeit more expensively. Then, in one of those extended Eureka moments yielding pronouncements of grave concern, it was discovered that while MTBE might be improving the air, it was also being detected in water supplies. Like a dowser on a contingency fee, MTBE, through its chemical propensities, can find water and get in it.

While large tank spills and leakage garner the greatest concern, the fact is that MTBE loves water so much that the vagaries of common usage, such as in boat engines, storm water runoff and even automobile accidents can result in detectable contamination, now found in 28 states. While MTBE certainly has foul odor and taste, its health effects, particularly in the minute quantities of measured exposures, are unknown (not that such quibbles matter to those who make reputations and money exploiting…well, almost anything they can find to exploit).

Thus it is that MTBE, once hawked by your government as a solution is now regarded as a nasty problem and is being phased out or banned. Since blame must be affixed for all travails, there are now more than 100 lawsuits, most initiated by cities as a result of MTBE clean-up costs real and imagined, with a bevy of trial lawyers circling like vultures to go for more. Naturally, those being sued are those who were told to make and use the stuff in the first place.

They are, as you would be in such circumstances, a bit put out, so the energy bill limited the liability of MTBE manufacturers to actual negligence, common sense to everyone in the universe but trial lawyers, who had their hit men and women in the Senate kill the bill.

With MTBE going the way of the dreaded DDT (which did, as claimed, kill mosquitoes), it is expected that ethanol, that heavily taxpayer-subsidized, corn-based political darling of all who campaign in Iowa will become the New Big Thing. Never mind it might be totally unnecessary. Never mind that it is extremely unstable and thus difficult and expensive to transport for long distances. Never mind that it may carry its own long-term health effects, about which we are currently ignorant. And never mind that while it doesn’t seek water, water seeks it, and instead of contaminated water, we may well get some contaminated gasoline, which will pretty much clunk down engines.

The sad part of all this is that if the government would only force us to subsidize corn for bourbon to the extent that it is willing to force subsidized ethanol, we’d all be a lot more mellow and perhaps some civility would return to public policy discourse.

Nah! The trial lawyers would still find their victims, and they already know where every deep pocket in the country is.