Paint it GREEN and the ignorant masses will flock to it like the Holy Grail. $1.00 per gallon gas is GONE, NEVER to return! Now that China and India are buying up the excess oil supply, that which used to be stored as "excess" inventory and which kept the price artificially low; the US can no longer singlehandedly control or dictate the price of crude oil! With record high demand, it is a sellers and suppliers’ market.
There is no 200 mpg carburetor for your 6000 pound 400 horsepower SUV and there is NO tooth fairy! If you get 12 MPG on gasoline then you will get 20% less on E-85. You cannot argue with the laws of thermodynamics, chemistry and physics. Thanks to some powerful lobbyists and business concerns, the typical US consumer is genuflecting at the feet of the ETHANOL "god". The automakers and the government would have us believe that ethanol is the “magic bean” that will save us from the oil monster! On the surface, it all sounds sooooo good. However, the truth is quite the opposite!
All the "Corn- to -ETHANOL fiasco" has accomplished is to drive up the price of food to match the price of gasoline. We cannot plant enough food to supply the world as it is. Therefore, diverting the limited arable cropland to corn production for ethanol is literally starving people the world over. All current policy does is provide a subsidy to agriculture at the expense of EVERY US taxpayer.
We must demand that government and industry invest time, money and effort on VIABLE and Sustainable technologies, not this hoax in the ground called ethanol! I am sure that the farmers in Iowa will scream that I am a communist for attacking their "cash cow"! They are getting FAT at the expense of the rest of us! Looking at the situation objectively, we must realize that ethanol is not ANY kind of solution! It is a fact that every gallon of ethanol produced requires fractionally more or less the same amount of oil (energy) to produce. Therefore, there is NO energy "savings" as touted by those people drunk from the profits produced by ethanol and ethanol subsidies. Vehicles burning ethanol as fuel produce less power and use more fuel, so there is no "savings" through economy. Ethanol does not even reduce the amount of CO² introduced into the atmosphere, even TIME Magazine and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Magazine agree on that! There is NO practical advantage to use ethanol, yet our government is funneling BILLIONS of borrowed dollars into the production and marketing of this huge boondoggle.
We must start building nuclear power plants today with modern technology that IS available, proven and WILL produce a dramatic and immediate reduction in carbon dioxide as well as reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The Nuclear industry is over-regulated and saddled by the specter of Three Mile Island. No one died at Three Mile Island and there was the POSSIBILITY of a very small release of radioactive steam and water. In all NO appreciable environmental impact, yet people are freaked out by "radiation"! HELL, we get more "radiation" from our dentist x-rays than what 99.99999% of the folks around the TMI complex received at the height of the accident!
I would much rather take my chances with the EXTREMELY REMOTE and statistically inconsequential possibility of an "incident" at a nuclear plant as the CERTAINTY of the proven dangers of coal, oil and gas fired power plants. The environmental Wackos go nuts when you mention "nuclear", they do not tell you that the nuclear industry is the safest and cleanest form of electrical production. There are more people killed and injured every year in accidents related to coal production and coal fueled power plants than have occurred in the ENTIRE history of the nuclear power industry in the USA! Before you start screaming “Yes, but you do not have “one of those” in your back yard!” you are wrong! Thank God, I live less than 5 miles from one of the safest nuclear power plants in the USA, by gosh I wish they could add another unit or two to the plant!
The typical 1000-megawatt coal-burning plant spews 100,000 tons of sulphur dioxide, 75,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 5000 tons of fly ash into the environment EVERY Year! A typical 1000-megawatt oil-burning plant belches about 16,000 tons of sulphur dioxide and 20,000 tons of nitrogen oxides into the air. These emissions account for a wide range of human health problems, the formation of acid rain that seriously damages structures, plant life and kills the aquatic life in countless lakes and streams. The problem is not limited to these emissions. Worst of all these plants also emit huge quantities of carbon dioxide. Whether you believe the “global warming” scenario or not, the extra CO² in the atmosphere is troubling.
The “Tree Huggers” scream about the “danger” of nuclear waste! The nuclear waste is FAR less dangerous when compared to the pollution to which we are exposed daily from fossil-fueled power plants. There are solutions to the nuclear waste problem, if only the environmental nuts would stop blocking progress. Even if we do nothing with nuclear waste but let it pile up, we are better off than we are with more coal, oil and gas fired power plants.
Electricity is the keystone for the transition to EVERY other alternative energy source. Without massive quantities of cheap and renewable electric energy, there is NO hope of developing the other promising "NEW" alternate technologies for energy production. We MUST have a source of power to seed if you will the transition from fossil fuels to something else. Modern nuclear technologies can supply this critical need while continuing to reduce global warming, dependence on foreign oil, acid rain, rape of the rain forest, strip mining and a lot more! All at a reasonable cost and acceptable risk.
Like the lyrics of the old Rainmakers song "Government Cheese",
"Give a man a free ticket on a dead end ride
And he'll climb in the back even though nobody's driving
Too goddamn lazy to crawl out of the wreck
And he'll rot there while he waits for the welfare check
Going to hell in a handbag, can't you see
I ain't gonna eat no Government Cheese"
Like it or not, ethanol is "government cheese" and we are either eating it, paying for it or both! I am Mad as Hell and I am not going to be quiet any longer!