The United States is facing a major crisis that threatens its freedoms and its future. The runaway prices of petroleum fuels are causing great damage to the American Dream. Many Americans have felt the onset of this destructive influence. This is a crisis with real consequences and real solutions. Let’s examine the possible solutions and methods by which we can reduce the impacts of our addiction to petroleum.
The effects of the rapidly rising fuel costs are many. Increased fuel costs have raised food prices, electric rates, transportation costs and more. Virtually every price in every sector has increased due to energy costs with the possible exception of housing costs. Speculation by real estate investors artificially drove the values of housing up. Homeowners began refinancing their homes to make improvements and to offset the rapidly increasing energy costs. Unfortunately, the proliferation of sub-prime variable rate loans set many of these homeowners up for a fall. The Federal Reserve in an attempt to curb what they interpreted as inflation due to excess cash flow, raised the interest rates; precipitating a massive increase in foreclosures and a rapid drop in housing prices. The real cause of the inflation was energy costs.
Every day, the price of fuel goes up. It doesn’t have to. Here is my suggested plan to slow the rise in petroleum prices and to restore some confidence in the future of America.
Step 1: The first step in the plan is to reduce fuel consumption in the most cost-effective manner possible. A very large portion of the population work in a number of jobs that can be performed effectively anywhere. These jobs include data entry, word processing, telephone-based services, and computer-based services. Many Americans commute daily to call centers and other offices where they spend the day talking to customers on the telephone and/or communicating via computer. Others commute to offices to enter information into computers, troubleshoot problems in software, or create using computers. These people can effectively do their jobs from anywhere, even from home.
Even though research and actual experience has shown that, on the average, productivity goes up and personal and corporate costs go down, management is usually reluctant to consider allowing workers to telecommute. The time has come for the government to mandate that any job that can be done through telecommuting must be done through telecommuting. This move would save the employees a bundle of time and money in reduced commutes and would dramatically improve the bottom line for employers. Most important, it would take a huge number of cars off the road, reducing petroleum demand by billions of dollars a year. Best of all, it can be done today!
It is far more effective for the governments to force employers to send employees home to work than to impose gas rationing stimulating, in turn, a black market economy as it did during World War II.
Step 2: The United States must significantly move away from using fossil fuels for transportation. The vast majority of vehicles on the road run exclusively on gasoline or diesel. This doesn’t have to be so. The internal combustion engine used for gasoline-powered automobiles can, with only very simple adjustments, be run on pure ethanol. Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on ethanol and stated that ethanol should be the fuel of choice because you can make it out of almost anything. In 1925 he said, “The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”
Much of the bulk movement of goods around the country depends heavily on diesel. Vast freight trains pulled by diesel-electric locomotives cross the country daily carrying millions of tons of goods. Diesel-powered semis haul most of the rest. It is not surprising that the diesel engine is used due to its efficiency. Otto Diesel designed the engine to be efficient and to be able to run on a variety of fuels. “At the Paris Exhibition in 1900 there was shown by the Otto Company a small Diesel engine, which, at the request of the French Government, ran on Arachide (earth-nut or pea-nut) oil, and worked so smoothly that only very few people were aware of it.”
In a very short time, virtually all diesel engines in the United States could be completely independent of petroleum. Biodiesel, a monoester (mono-ester) of a fatty acid and an ethanol, can be used directly or in any mixture with petroleum diesel in any diesel engine, without modification. Biodiesel can be made from any fat such as the oils in grains, vegetables and even weeds. It can be extracted from algae, fish, insects, and any animal. The process of converting used cooking oil into high quality biodiesel fuel is similar to the age-old process for making soap. The biggest drawbacks to the use of biodiesel are the opposition by oil companies to any energy they can’t directly control and the decision by many car companies to void the warrantees on any diesel car using biodiesel.
The government must stimulate the growth of small, independent manufacturers of biodiesel, research into economically attractive sources of the raw materials for making biodiesel and the wide distribution of biodiesel across the United States. One dairy that I know of, XL Dairy Group, Inc. of Vicksburg, Arizona, is taking the corn for the cattle feed and splitting it into starches, oils and proteins. The starches are fermented to make ethanol; the oils are made into biodiesel; and the proteins are fed to the cattle. The whole operation is run by the methane gas from fermenting the manure.
The use of hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered vehicles is another option. Two companies have demonstrated the practicality of running such a vehicle using their technologies for generating hydrogen on demand from water. This type of innovation must be encouraged and new more efficient vehicles can be introduced very rapidly.
Step 3: Research and efforts must be stepped up to move more and more of our energy needs away from fossil fuels. These efforts should include:
1. Stronger tax credits or other incentives for energy improvements such as solar power, wind power, energy efficient construction techniques or other energy saving changes.
2. Strong governmental intervention on the exporting of American jobs.(The movement of American jobs overseas has resulted in longer commutes at lower pay for many Americans)
3. Research into energy generation systems that are more efficient and potentially cost effective.
4. The implementations of highly effective recycle programs.
In conclusion, the future can be what we make of it. We can take action now to have a bright future or we can sit back and watch our future crumble into a bleak and unrecoverable series of shortages.
Richard T. Moolick
