A Manhattan Project for Alternative Fuels?

Oil at $147 per barrel. Gasoline pushing $4.50 per gallon. Remember those days? It wasn't long ago - just this last July of 2008, gasoline prices were threatening to crush consumer spending budgets. A popular joke popping up around then went, "She asked me to take her to some place expensive. So I took her to the gasoline station."

But then the great tsunami of the subprime crash struck the shores of the US economy, inundating and utterly submerging the oil price crisis into obscurity. Between the massive exodus of index oil speculators dumping their shares, and the economic crash, oil prices were sent to the bottom of the sea to settle at, as of the writing of this article, under $40 per barrel.

Suddenly, all that talk about alternative energy quieted down. Two divergent realities are now emerging with respect to low oil prices and the economy: due to lower gasoline prices, SUV sales are projected to outsell car sales and hybrid vehicle sales in December of 2008; but because of the souring economy, Americans are driving less - 100 billion miles less, as of the November 2007-October 2008 period.

What this means for now is, Americans are using less gasoline because, for many, there isn't a job to drive to. Of course, many people are also moving away from rural areas to urban areas where they're closer to work, plus there are the occasional hyper-milers and a continual rise in the use of public transportation. But Americans are also buying gas guzzling SUVs because per mile, gasoline is cheaper.

What this means in the future is, when the economy recovers, Americans will be caught again in the midst of a firestorm of skyrocketing gasoline prices, driving their gas guzzling SUVs that, like in 2008, they found themselves desperately trying to sell off.

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

The oil industry made billions of dollars per year off the backs of American commuters in 2006. 8 billion for Exxon-Mobil, for instance. Exxon's CEO made $400 million that year. Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin - in my opinion a far worse monster and testosterone poison poster boy than George W Bush - has declared that the era of 'Cheap gas' is ending. In his case, he means natural gas - but guess what is a chief component in the making of gasoline? You guessed it - natural gas. Squeeze the supply of natural gas, or raise its price, and the price of gasoline goes up. And that's what Putin is calling for - the OPEC-ization of natural gas. Guess why your gasoline is so high? It's because of OPEC. They just declared a cut in global oil production in order to shore up their own profits. Saudi Arabia wants oil prices at $75 per barrel.

Oil at $75 per barrel.

That's not Capitalism - that's price fixing. Can you imagine owning a store, and calling up Wal Mart and agreeing to hold milk at $6 bucks a gallon? Yeah, right, how do those handcuffs feel around your wrists?

Well, that's what the oil industry wants. They want your gasoline to be more expensive than it is now. And they certainly wouldn't mind if oil went back to $150 per barrel and we were back to paying nearly $5 per gallon of gasoline.

Domestic drilling won't bring us new supplies of oil for at least the next 10 years, and when it does, two things are absolutely certain to happen: one, OPEC would drastically cut oil production from other countries in order to compensate for what America produces, and this would negate a great deal of the savings we would realize. For America to beat this act of market manipulation, we would have to rely more heavily on our new sources of oil - which we would burn through quite rapidly, until suddenly, our domestic reserves run low, and we're back to being dependent upon foreign oil because we no longer have those dormant supplies domestically.

Now stay with me here - what will also happen here is we have a currently established pattern of Americans buying gas guzzling SUVs during periods of lower gasoline prices. Which means research into better fuel efficient vehicles will be greatly retarded, which means that when we run out of domestic oil, we will have a huge glut of factories producing gas guzzlers, with only a smattering of high fuel efficiency cars and hybrids thrown into the mix. In other words, we will see high oil prices return - with a vengeance. When that time comes, $4.50 per gallon gasoline will be looked back upon as the good old days, and not as the ugly nightmare we see it as now. Then there are all the other problems that come with this - namely, the cost of food will go up again. Remember the food riots in Haiti, driven largely by skyrocketing gasoline prices? That could happen again when gasoline shoots over $4.50 per gallon and stays there, and it could even spread to America.

Why, again, do we keep doing this to ourselves?

Because, quite simply, fossil fuels and America are like the marriage between Ike and Tina Turner, minus the divorce that finally freed Tina Turner. The oil industry beats us senseless, and we come right back for more - except, unlike with Tina Turner, we as Americans lack the spine to fight back. Not only that, but we have closed-minded people who are determined to fight the progression of technology with the propaganda that oil - indeed fossil fuels - are our last, best hope for cheap and plentiful energy. Another good analogy for our oil dependency is a drug addiction.

Well, anyone who knows about conservation of energy (and therefore mass), knows that it is impossible for fossil fuels to last forever. We will be weaned off of fossil fuels one way or another - if we will not be weaned by finding an alternative, then we will be weaned when it runs out. Those who say it won't run out, advocate that we believe in sheer sorcery. It's no more complex than that. But long before oil runs completely out, we will run out of light sweet crude - the easily extracted oil - and we will be paying through the nose to extract oil from such tough sources as oil shale. That, in and of itself, will drive the price of oil high enough to hobble the global economy yet again.

So how do we break this vicious cycle?

That part is simple.

We recognize that dependency upon oil is a national security risk. It is not only worse than terrorism, but it even helps fund terrorism! Worse yet, oil dependency will either ruin our air with pollution or eventually result in global warming and global flooding, perhaps just as we're also running out.

If we find within ourselves the national will to declare that oil dependency is a threat to our national security, we start to look at the alternatives, and form a strategy.

Under optimum political and infrastructural conditions - namely, a costly switchover to a nationwide DC-based power grid - we could power all of America during the day and considerably into the night time with only 92 solid square miles of solar paneling. 92 square miles.

But since the sticking point here is converting America's power grid from AC to DC, we could also implement some interim measures.

We could build pebble-bed nuclear power plants, which are highly resistant to meltdowns. China has a prototype running right now. Imagine that, China has the will to build more advanced nuclear reactors than we do. How did America sink so low?

A few things about the viability of nuclear power: one, France gets up to 80% of its power from nuclear plants. George W Bush himself congratulated France on this. Mind you, America is deeply mired in a "hate France" mentality, so this is a big thing for our "dear" President Bush to give them kudos over their energy policy. Why can't we build more nuclear power plants?

Perhaps it's because of some of the anti-nuclear environmentalists, who share some of the responsibility for the mess we're in (but certainly not nearly as much responsibility as is owed to the oil industry)? Certainly, not all environmentalists are responsible for our lack of nuclear plants. Dr James E. Lovelock, the author of the "Gaia Theory", supports nuclear energy. So does an organized group called "Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy". There are environmentalists out there who know that America has never had a real meltdown in its plants, and that the risk of a meltdown pales in comparison to the constant pollution we receive from coal-fired power plants of today, and indeed from our very dependence upon coal itself. Centralia, Pennsylvania is an example of how dangerous the use of coal is to our environment - compared to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which poses no threat at all, Centralia's underground coal fires will continue to burn for the next 250 years!

Nuclear power and solar power could not only provide ample energy for recharging electric cars, but it could also provide cheap energy for our emerging high-tech society. We could also, in addition, invest in the T Boone Pickens system, by which we would use domestic natural gas in the interim and also exploit wind power in the midwest.

Now, as for specific solutions for weaning us off of gasoline - that is also doable. Again, we just need the willpower.

Today, America has the technology to build cars with solar panels that allow for improved recharging, especially during the summer. This, along with electric batteries, could extend a car's driving range. The thing is, we had electric cars back in the 1830s. Imagine how efficient they would be if we had spent the last 170 years improving them, instead of spending the last 100 years feeding our addiction to crude oil and gasoline.

Keep it Simple, Stupid!

Most of all, there is a solution that could make an electric car's driving range completely moot.

A driver could simply pull up to a refueling station, remove their existing battery, and replace it with a fully charged one. The station would simply recharge the batteries using a combination of the electric grid and solar panels on the rooftops of the refueling area/parking lot and on the rooftops of the adjacent convenience store.

Voila. Every electric car in the world can have the entire country as its driving range, as long as they stop at a refueling station and swap in a fresh battery. And, with a new solar infrastructure and revitalized nuclear power system, we would have a more than ample supply of electricity to handle this. It could take even less time than pumping a tank of gasoline. Batteries could be swapped using machines. The car's battery could be lifted up for tongs to remove them and swap in a newly charged replacement. There would be no need for the driver to get out and do anything. A chimp could engineer this.

Meanwhile, the Government could take money from the War in Iraq and use it to fund research into technology for lighter, more efficient mobile electricity storage - which usually means more efficient batteries. This would mean an evolution from electric cars to electric trucks, even electric big rigs and trains. Today all these vehicles stop to pump gas - tomorrow they'll stop to swap batteries.

And if you think dead battery disposal is bad - just look up what it costs the environment to produce and store gasoline!

This is a simple solution that any high school dropout could implement. All we need is the national willpower to make it happen.

So what are we waiting for, then? A return to $4.50 a gallon gasoline?

Instead of coming up with excuses for why we can't implement this radical, yet technologically simple series of interim solutions, instead of retreating behind propaganda to defend outdated internal combustion technology, how about we come up with some solutions for how we can move ahead toward independence from oil?

Isn't America flat out tired of being gouged by the oil industry?

Here is the research I did for this article:

SUV sales are up as of Dec 26, 2008:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=13792

Americans are driving less as of Dec 24, 2008:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6181288.html

There is a nationwide rise in the use of Public Transportation:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/081216/20081216005258.html?.v=1

Electric Cars were mass produced back in the 1830s:

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarselectrica.htm

The once and future kings of robber barons - the oil industry:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12519975/

Vladmir Putin, Prime Minister of Russia, says that 'Cheap natural gas era' is ending:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/12/23/russia.putin.gas/

OPEC manipulates oil prices with production cuts:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/18/opec-cut-production-oil-markets

Saudi Arabia wants oil prices at $75 a barrel:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/11/29/oil.saudi.arabia.opec.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

The difference between extracting light sweet crude oil and more difficult sources such as oil shale:

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay06/atlantic-oil.html

92 square miles of solar power could supply all of America with electricity:

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/991/

Pebble bed nuclear reactors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

Dr James Ephraim Lovelock, the author of the "Gaia Theory", supports nuclear energy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock#Nuclear_power

Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalists_for_Nuclear_Energy

George W Bush praised France on their nuclear policy:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june01/nuclear_5-22.html

Three Mile Island did not suffer a real meltdown, the nearby community was not contaminated, and no lives were lost:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

The Centralia, Pennsylvania coal mine fire will burn for the next 250+ years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

Solar powered cars can be made:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/solar-cars.htm

T Boone Pickens offers a compromise plan for using domestic natural gas and wind power to eliminate America's dependency upon foreign oil:

http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/