Possibly higher fillup cost aside (highly dependent on access to fuel, local incentives, etc), getting worse MPG is not negative here. E85 dumps ~12lbs of CO2 per gallon burned. Say you have to burn 133% more of it to go the same distance (75% of the mpg that you would get on gasoline). No, lets even say you have a crappy system and only get 2/3 the mpg...so you use 150% of the fuel... you're at 18lbs of CO2 to go as far as you would on a gallon of gasoline. Gasoline puts out 19.5lbs per gallon. E85 wins- jsut barely, but it does (ignoring the still-not-settled energy to make the stuff argument here)

AND...that CO2 was...CO2 just 6 months ago. Net gain ~zero, unlike burning gasoline which is putting CO2 that had been locked away for a billion years or so. Not to mention the almost nonexistent NOx, SO2, and CO.

I'll take the MPG hit any day of the week. It smells better coming out of the tailpipe, too- much better than gas. Sort of sweet.

Will it take a whoooole lot of consumer education to get people thinking in terms of a different yardstick than mpg? Hell yeah. But that's why Marketing people get paid- to shift consumers' minds. The science is 100%.