It was just a short while ago… 2007, in fact… that our government set us on a path which they told us would be leading us toward energy independence. It was called the Energy Independence and Security Act [1](EISA) of 2007, passed by the U.S. Congress in December, which called for a five-fold increase in ethanol production by 2022 and provided tax incentives and grants to ethanol producers. Just think; We could grow as much gasoline as we want, the government told us.
Turns out, though, while Ethanol makes a marginally attractive alternative fuel, it does have a few issues the government didn’t tell us about. Among them, comes the idea that what the government calls an alternative source for Gasoline, is in fact a primary source of food, for which there really isn’t much in the way of alternatives. And so, people around the world are noting …and complaining about…increases in food prices.
It also turns out that while the government told us that ethanol was clean burning, we’ve now found by way of a report in the journal Science that Ethanol produces virtually double the greenhouse gasses as more conventional fuel over the same 30 year period. Time magazine concluded the same thing, in an article called “The Clean Energy Myth [2]“. Even worse, It turns out that grain based biofuels take more energy to produce, than they provide when burned, if you include the energy required to help the growing process along… to say nothing of the problems such growing causes to our water tables.
Well, I’d like to take this opportunity to propose an alternative fuel to grain based ethanol: Oil.
Think of the advantages…
Allowing exploration and exploitation of what oil we have will provide us with a 30% cut in CO2 emissions at the off. It will cause a massive cut in the amount of expenditures in government support for Ethanol production at a time when we certainly need such a help in our economy. It will cause a massive drop in food prices, world wide, which will doubtless make the UN happy. It’s not been very happy about US caused food shortages. (Leaving aside, of course the issue of hwy we’re bending over forward on food prices for the rest of the world while we’re paying the long buck for the energy to produce said food…)
Oil is a mature and reliable source of energy, provided we allow ourselves to explore our own part of the world for it. The delivery system for it is already in place. Perhaps it’s time to invest serious effort in our own alternative energy… Oil. All we really need to do is get government out of the way.
Of course, that will be tough… the toughest job of all. As it stands, oil production currently is efficient, efficient, profitable, and clean. As it stands right now, we are sitting on more raw crude oil materials than exists in the the whole of the Middle East. However, because of governmental regulations established to satisfy questionable calls to protect ‘the environment’, we can’t touch it. Thank you government.
Look, gang… China and India are preparing to drill off our southern coats… for OUR oil…, but we can’t for “Environmental” reasons. More correctly, political reasons. Even more correctly, governmental interference. Brazil, for all that they were running on Ethanol, is about to become energy independent because of their recent huge finds of oil. Of course, they’re out there LOOKING for the stuff, too, you see, whereas our own government has told us we cannot. As a result of this misguided “environmental’ policy, we’re the ones being left behind, being turned into a third world country… all because our government forces us to eschew oil as an energy source.
My answer? Drill, baby, Drill. Start producing an alternative to Ethanol.
And do it now.