When President George Washington and the nation's young democracy placed a tax on alcohol, they faced what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion from angry western farmers.

Soon, President Barack Obama's push for green jobs and climate change legislation could hit a wall of opposition from angry farm state Democrats and Republicans who don't like the way the Environmental Protection Agency is treating ethanol and biodiesel.

Thursday, the ethanol rebellion gathered strength when the House Agriculture Committee introduced a bill that prevents EPA from holding U.S. ethanol and biodiesel responsible for deforestation of tropical jungles. The EPA has thrown so-called indirect land use into its first estimates of the carbon footprint of fuels. That would make corn ethanol from new plants and much of the nation's soy-based biodiesel no longer eligible for federal mandates that require oil companies to use biofuels. The mandates, called the Renewable Fuel Standard in a 2007 energy bill, require the nation to use 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022.

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Friday, the ag committee chairman, Representative Collin Peterson (D-MN), told Agriculture Online that he will work to defeat any climate change legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives until his "Renewable Fuel Standard Improvement Act," becomes law. And he has let the House leadership know how he feels.

"I've told them I want this passed. I want it signed by the President before I'll support anything else," he said Friday in a telephone interview from St. Cloud, Minnesota, where he was waiting for a thunderstorm to blow over before flying his own plane to his southwest Minnesota district for the weekend.

Next week, Peterson expects the House Energy and Commerce Committee, headed by Representative Henry Waxman of California, to pass a climate change bill. But he thinks he may have enough votes to defeat Waxman's bill when the full House votes on it. Peterson's bill that reins in the EPA has the backing of his committee's top Republican, Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, all 29 Democrats on the committee, and by Monday, probably most of the Republicans. As of Friday his bill had support from a few other House Democrats, with 42 co-sponsors joining Peterson and Lucas in opposing the EPA. House Republicans are expected to vote as a block against the climate bill, anyway. So Peterson said he'll need 37 Democrats to defeat the climate bill.

"If everybody stuck to their guns, we'd have enough votes, if they do get it out of Energy and Commerce -- and they bought enough votes they can get it out of committee -- then we can stop it on the floor," Peterson said.

Peterson and other supporters of biofuels long have been unhappy over four last-minute changes in the 2007 energy bill, the Energy Independence and Security Act. One was using indirect land use to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels. The law requires EPA to calculate how much new fuels reduce greenhouse gas output and requires new corn ethanol plants to be at least 20% greener than gasoline. All soy biodiesel plants have to be 50% greener than diesel fuel. When the EPA put out its first estimates for comments on May 5, ethanol was only 16% better than gasoline and soy biodiesel was just 22% better than diesel.

The three other last-minute changes made it harder to produce biomass for cellulosic ethanol, which is supposed be a big share of biofuels by 2022. The energy law doesn't support biomass unless it's grown on cropland. "They wanted people to stop growing corn and start growing switchgrass," Peterson explained. And wood chips and waste that could also be used for cellulosic ethanol can only come from private tree plantings, not National Forests.

Peterson fought House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over a fourth last-minute change. "You couldn't grow any biomass crop unless the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) approved it. She took that out," Peterson told Agriculture Online Friday. Others have blamed Pelosi for putting the changes in, which Peterson believes were done for environmental groups. Peterson said he isn't sure if it was requested by Waxman, Representative John Dingell (who was head of Waxman's committee in 2007) or Pelosi. "Nobody will admit where this comes from," he said.

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"We've been trying to get this resolved ever since they passed that bill. It was stuck in in the middle of the night," Peterson said.

Without using indirect land use, EPA's estimate of ethanol's greenhouse gas output shows ethanol to be 60% better than gasoline, Peterson said. Adding indirect effects makes the fuel look 44% less green. Peterson is also puzzed by EPA's rating of sugar cane ethanol from Brazil, which is more than 40% better than gasoline.

"There's a lot of forces involved, including the Brazilians and the environmentalists," Peterson said. He believes their ultimate goal is to end the use of corn ethanol, eliminate a tariff on imported ethanol and import ethanol from Brazil.

Besides taking indirect land use out of EPA's calculations, the Ag Committee's bill would change the energy law so that biomass can come from more sources, and it gives the Secretaries of Agriculture and Energy more influence over EPA's regulation of biofuels.

"I just think this is an important enough principle, that if they don't fix this, I'm going to bring this climate bill down. I probably won't be very popular and I may not be chairman of the Agriculture Committee, who knows," Peterson said.

Others in Congress are still trying to get EPA to revise its estimates of biofuel carbon output.

Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, another Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, said this week that she and other members of Congress have asked EPA to extend its comment period on its new renewable fuel standard rule from 60 days to 180.

"Given the groundbreaking, controversial, and untested new scientific models being proposed in this rule -- as well as the fact that the rule is hundreds of pages long -- it is imperative that stakeholders in the biofuels industry and in agriculture have a full and fair opportunity to analyze the rule and submit meaningful comments to EPA," Herseth Sandlin said in a statement.

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Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) agreed with Herseth Sandlin's letter, telling Agriculture Online that "I'm glad they sent that. I think we (senators) ought to send one, too. I still don't think that EPA knows how to calculate this."

In the Senate, South Dakota Senator John Thune, has introduced a different bill that would take indirect land use out of EPA's calculations. But that effort may not have as much bipartisan support as Peterson's in the House.

Thune's South Dakota colleague, Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, told Agriculture Online this week that he doesn't yet support Thune's bill.

"It seems to me that the bill is well-intentioned but premature," Johnson said. "The first thing is to get the science right."

There's little doubt that clearing and burning tropical jungles puts a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and could be one of the causes of global warming. So does plowing up native grasslands. But farm-state members of Congress contend that there's little proven correlation between U.S. crop acreage and land use in other nations, at least that can be tied to just one factor in the market, demand for crops for biofuels.

Johnson is hoping that an expert panel will advise EPA to change its estimates of biofuels' carbon output.

So are some lobbyists in the biofuels industry.

"We're hopeful that the Obama administration will look at this more carefully," said Sara Taylor, a lobbyist for the Renewable Energy Group, one of the nation's largest producers of biodiesel. "Part of it is educating political appointees that there's other science that needs to be looked at."

Like others in the biofuels industry, Taylor is still trying to determine exactly how EPA came up with estimates that seem to penalize biofuels.

"To lay deforestation at the feet of soybean producers in Iowa is not well thought out," Taylor said. "The value of lumber is what's driving deforestation. That's too expensive a process to go through all that just to plant soybeans."

Taylor said she doesn't know how much support Peterson will have in the House for his bill, although she appreciates his support of biofuels. "Certainly, he's been a great advocate and a champion for us on this."

Other members of Congress who like the idea of using biofuels to make the U.S. more energy independent are also hearing from environmental groups that oppose biofuels, she said.

"I think there's some confusion that particularly more moderate and liberal Democrats are experiencing right now," she said.

Taylor is placing her hope in President Obama, who as a senator from Illinois and a candidate, was a strong supporter of biofuels and renewable energy.

"We're hopeful that Obama will do the right thing," she said.