We Need to Get Off of Oil

I have a saying. Yes I will take credit for it because I haven’t heard anyone else use it, so if you have heard this before, please let me know so I can give credit to where credit is due. I’d hate to be labeled a Joe Biden, er um, I mean a plagiarizer. That saying is, just because a crack addict can make their own crack does not make them any less of a crack addict.

There is not question that the United States of America is addicted to oil. Our cars use it; our planes, our homes, and our plastics are just a few examples as to how oil has seeped its way into every facet of our daily lives.

Politicians on one side of the argument say “drill here drill now”, while others say, “drill baby drill”. Sure drilling here at home will remove our need of foreign oil, but the addiction to oil itself still remains.

Like my saying above, just because we can produce our own oil here at home does not make us any less dependent on it. So instead of sending some of our money over seas to OPEC, we send it to a bunch of billionaires here at home and turn them into trillionaires. If that makes you feel more comfortable then so be it, but the fact remains we need to get off of oil.

The free markets and our own freedoms give every America the possibility of accomplishing this feat. For instance you can obtain a free federal permit allowing you to make your own ethanol, which is the source of fuel many believe is the future to powering our vehicles. Ethanol is nothing more than alcohol produced from a variety of sources. It is done so by basically boiling what is called a mash and then the steam from that boiling mash is cooled so the steam is turned into alcohol. The downfall of this is it takes a lot of energy to produce that mash, therefore leaving many to wonder is it worth doing.

I say it is. Going back to why I think the free markets and freedoms of America will produce the solution is for this simple reason, when so many people are trying different ways to produce a product you will invariably get lots of ideas which in turn will be the one solution we are looking for.

We have seen it with so many inventions, from the light bulb to the telephone to even the home computer and the way we listen to music. It will be no different with ethanol either.

The work performed on producing ethanol has lead the industry to realize that the left over mash once it has been done boiling to extract the ethanol can then be fed back to the livestock. Many people believed that producing ethanol would leave a deficiency in live stock food, but the opposite is true. In fact live stock now have an even better source of food since a lot of the sugars have been removed.

Also another bi-product of ethanol production is carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is captured and then resold to make dry ice and carbonate beverages. These are just two examples of the solutions that have come from continuous experiments with ethanol. We must continue with the process if we ever want to get off of oil. The price we will pay later for not getting off of oil far outweighs it the cost it takes today to produce it.