FACT NUMBER ONE: The economy runs on oil. Transportation requires oil. Fact number two: 78 percent of the oil comes from OPEC, a coalition of thirteen countries. Fact number three: When we use less oil, they pump less oil, keeping the price the same. When we drill more oil of our own, they pump less oil, keeping the price the same. In other words, as long as we are dependent on oil alone for transportation, we cannot impact the price of oil on the world market.I think America should try to drill for its own oil. But even if the U.S. pumped all of its own oil, what would oil companies do when the price of oil on the American market was lower than the price those oil companies could get for their oil on the world market?
However you look at it, the quickest solution — a solution that could be added to any other solution — is to introduce competition into the fuel market so oil is no longer the only fuel cars can burn. The simplest, most inexpensive solution is to pass a law making it mandatory that every car sold in the U.S. must be a "flex fuel" car. This is also called "an open fuel standard." All cars would be manufactured already capable of burning multiple fuels (including gasoline).
To make a car a flex fuel car adds about 100 U.S. dollars to the cost of a new car, which is chump change in the big scheme of things. Some U.S. car manufacturers already make flex fuel cars — and most of them are shipped to Brazil!
If most cars on the road were flex fuel cars, it would create enough financial incentive for businesses to justify new fuel pumps at "gas stations," to produce new, competing fuels, and to invest in the development of competing fuels. Right now so few cars are flex fuel cars, the market is not big enough for a business to expend resources to get in the business of providing the fuel or developing fuels.
Brazil went from zero to 70 percent of their cars being flex fuel cars in three years. Last year, 90 percent of new cars sold in Brazil were flex fuel cars. When oil prices went up recently on the world market, alternative fuels sold better in Brazil. They used more ethanol than gasoline last year. Because they had a choice.
In an upcoming Citizen Warrior article, we will have something specific you can do to help make this law a reality. But first, please learn more about this important issue. Oil money is reaching its hand into every aspect of life, strongly influencing the Islamization of Western democracies, including the building of mosques (and mega-mosques). We must cut off their money supply. The first step is to learn more about the flex fuel imperative. Start here:
Watch an 85 minute talk by Anne Korin and Gal Luft: Turning Oil Into Salt: Energy Independence Through Fuel Choice.
Read a Wall Street Journal article, How to End America's Addiction to Oil (PDF)
Read an article from The American Interest: Fueled Again? (PDF)
Read the book: Turning Oil Into Salt.
Watch a movie entitled Turning Oil Into Salt on YouTube.
Read an article on Citizen Warrior: Support An Open Fuel Standard
Check out an organization working for flex fuel legislation: Set America Free
A mate of mine is a scientist, very well read etc and he tells me that alternative biological-based fuels are impracticable. Apparently, according to him, countries that have tried it find that when they start growing say sugar cane for fuel, the production of products for food declines (guns or butter argument of economics?). He says the density of bio fuels isn't high which means yield per tonne of product is low, as opposed to oil which is energy dense. We'll have to find some alternative energy sources when oil runs out, but what they will be remains a mystery.
ReplyDeleteThat may be the case now, Robin, but that doesn't mean that will be the case when there is money to be made aplenty. You can count on innovation in this area when the market is so enormous if you can succeed.
ReplyDeleteEven now, even with fuels as they are, biofuels were CHEAPER than gas in Brazil during the last oil price hike.
Mark my words: Innovators will find ways of making viable fuel out of garbage, polution, whatever. With such a lucrative market, the incentives will be very high. People can be amazingly inventive when driven by that kind of incentive.