I was at the gas pumps the other day and was thinking about the prices and how it seems every time I fill up the car it costs more and more. I flashed back to when I first started driving and remembered that I could fill up my car for right around $10 to $12, depending if I was on empty or not. The car, back then, was an old ‘61 Pontiac Bonneville with a 22 or 24 gallon tank. Looking back over time I’ve seen where I have bought smaller and lighter weight automobiles that get better mileage. Today it still costs me about the same to fill up and I drive about the same amount of miles on a tank of gas. I then began wondering if I had in fact sacrificed my safety of that big old heavy machine for today’s paper thin body-skin, light-weight frames, and plastic. Is this why more and more people are dying in crashes every year? Have we become so accustomed to the shenanigans of the oil industry and the way they have manipulated the prices to not recognize this change.

This stuck in my mind for the remainder of my commute and on into the evening. I thought about things I hadn’t thought about in years. Why are we still using fossil fuels to power our automobiles or heat our homes? You would think that with our technological advancements we would have come up with some alternative fuel to use. Hell, we’ve put a man on the moon why can’t we solve this little problem. As I thought more about it I remembered some of the alternatives recommended several years ago. One more than any struck me as being an excellent choice. It’s not nuclear power, it’s not solar power, and it’s not wind power. It’s alcohol, specifically, ethyl-alcohol. Yep, that’s the same stuff numerous people drink and we all know it’s a combustible liquid. It is also one of the cleanest burning fuels available today. When used as a fuel, in a combustion engine, the by-products are carbon-dioxide and water. That’s it, no other compounds or pollutants.

Is it capable of doing the job? Certainly, back in the early 1970s when we were faced with the shortage, the oil embargo, long lines at the pumps, and "odd and even" fueling days we had a lot of interest in this area. Quite a few people made machines that would run on alcohol with equal power as that of the gas-powered machines. Today, the Indy cars use alcohol and are developing incredible horse-power from this replenishable fuel. Germany had been using alcohol fuel during the later part of W.W.II when they needed their oil for their military machine. Why can’t we do the same in peace-time?

The potential for the use of alcohol as a fuel is unlimited, so aren’t the benefits. Sometime in the mid to late 1970's one of the universities in California used a 1973 Pontiac Grand Safari wagon, installed a pre-heat venturi intake system (turns the liquid into a gas) on the standard 400 cubic inch engine and achieved over 150 miles per gallon with the system. Imagine what we could do with the advanced and new technology that we have available today. By the way, what happened to this concept? Why did it die? The oil companies and OPEC, that’s why. They saw an end to their enormous profits and the oil market returned to a somewhat controlled entity. They ended the need to advance technology or search for a new source. Those with the oil are the rich of today and they plan to stay that way.

So, why would we want to switch now? Well, I see it as a way to reduce pollution, a method of giving farmers additional cash-crops to produce, a reduction in our dependence on countries that have significant oil reserves, and a direct reduction in the amount of money we send out of the nation (trade deficit). I also have another unsupported theory that by not pumping the oil out of the earth we would reduce or minimize the effect of earth-quakes.

We all know about the pollution issues and the dangers of oil accidents and spills. But what have we done about it? Nothing, everything that has happened before can happen again. Another drunk skipper or bad weather and we have a Valdez repeat. Remember the pictures of what Kuwait looked like when the Iraqi troops pulled out and set the wells on fire. Nothing but black smoke blanketing miles upon miles of area. If we are capable shouldn’t we take steps to reduce the possibility of this happening again.

Our farmers today are receiving more and more subsidies from our government, most of it is paid for them not to grow a crop. We have farmers that have grown tobacco for years that are running into a concentrated effort to get them to quit and switch to other crops without a real market to support it. Think of the amount of crops we could have them grow to support a new fuel and an eventual switch to this clean energy. These farmers might want to hang onto their land if they saw a chance to make a living farming instead of parceling it off for development.

If we switched would we care so much about what is happening in the middle-east or would the "strategic value" be reduced were we wouldn’t have to worry so much about who is running these countries and what they are doing. I think we could improve our diplomatic position by removing their major bargaining chip from them. These countries wouldn’t have their "prized cash cow" any longer and their ability to obtain advanced weaponry would be drastically diminished. Couldn’t this make the world a little safer. I think it might.

Switching to alcohol would have a dramatic impact on the trade deficit also. The money we spend on foreign oil would be significantly reduced. We would be keeping more of our money in our economy. Why should we have to pay through the nose for this energy needs when we are capable of coming up with an alternative?

My final point might be a little out there for some of you that read this, but I have to believe that others out there will give this theory consideration or might have thought about this themselves. The theory is that pumping oil out of the earth is similar to bleeding the fluid out of a shock-absorber. When the fluid is removed the travel of the shock is greater and bumps are significantly more severe. Wouldn’t you think the dynamics are similar for the earth’s plates? Is this why we seem to be having more severe seismic activity? I’m not 100 percent positive, but, to me, it seems logical. I do know that in most wells as the oil is pumped out water is pumped in to push the most oil out of the well as possible. I also know that the density of oil and water are extremely different. What is the impact of pumping all of this oil out of the ground? I don’t know but I’ll bet the oil companies will say there is none. Imagine that.