I used to think burning food was really silly, then found how little of our food is actually being used for ethanol, even as our food production increases.
Robert Zubrin’s methanol/ethanol/E-85 argument is sound: make all vehicles flex fuel capable so the market can respond.
The problem is that we don’t have the basic American component in place to lower the price of gasoline: competition. Yes, there are many oil companies but they all use the same raw material…oil, and it’s not even our oil.
If all options available to me are petroleum based (regular, hi-octane or diesel) and the price of petroleum is set by the world market, the price will be out of our control.
If, however, I could pull into a fuel station and see foreign petroleum-based fuel at $4 or $5 per gallon and domestically-produced alcohol at $3 per gallon or less, which do you think I will put in the tank?
As I see the sudden backlash against ethanol growing and I see who is criticizing ethanol, my Spider Sense starts tingling.
Do you see who’s screaming the loudest against ethanol? Hugo Chavez and the UN. (And to a lesser degree in a self-preservation move, the oil companies.)
They see that every dollar we spend on domestically-produced American ethanol is a dollar not exported to the Iranian mullahs, the Saudi sheiks and the South American dictators. No wonder they’re screaming.
If American creativity came up with a true alternative to oil, Chavez and OPEC would have a lot less to spend on weapons to assure their tyranny and to pad their Swiss bank accounts.
The first and most-achievable shot across OPEC’s bow is ethanol alcohol. It’s here now and it can work. The next is methanol: non-food-based alcohol. You aren’t going to drive on wind or solar power. You can on alcohol. Nuclear power could allow us to drive electrically, but good luck getting any new power plants of any kind built.
If we actually introduced competition to our fuel market, amazing things would happen.
