Addiction to Oil and Solutions

It is no secret that America is addicted to oil, we are crack fiends for oil. America uses one third of the worlds cars, and one quarter of the worlds energy produced. America has gone to war over oil. After 9/11 the Bush administration declared war on Afghanistan and Iraq without the permission of Congress. Bush claimed that they were going to find Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), but that turned out to be a deliberate lie created by the Bush administration ands its bureaucrats. They claimed that they would disarm Saddam Hussein and prevent him from further killing people, but we learned that we were responsible for arming him in the first place. Even after his capture and the fall of Iraq, and the longest war in America’s history, our troops still remain in the Middle East. The real agenda was later revealed, and if was already well known, but the real agenda of the war was to gain control of the oil. The Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, has 25% of the world’s oil fields.

After years of searching for WMD, nothing even close was discovered. When the support of Bush’s plans declined over the years, more and more people demanded that we bring our troops home. But will that ever be accomplished. I hope so, but as long as we are addicted to oil, I think that will not happen. Right now, we have built three of the world’s largest military bases in Iraq and a U.S. Embassy in the heart of Baghdad that is larger than Vatican City –that’s not a temporary deal.

Sweden is nearly entirely petroleum free, it plans to be in 2020 - that's mind-blowing. Germany, England, Denmark, and many other countries are working tirelessly to only use renewable energy and rely less and less on foreign oil.

We continue to drill offshore, which is a large waste of money and manpower. It also is very dangerous and risks a huge spill. As seen several times since the 1970’s oil spills are frequent and response to them is slow. These spills cause much damage to the environment. America goes as far as trying to drill oil beneath the polar ice cap. This is a problem since ice floats and moves. So you cannot expect to build a station on Tuesday and expect it to be in the same place on Thursday, that is why a lot of conservative think tanks and oil companies are cheering the melting of the polar ice cap and spreading the lies and misinformation that global warming is a hoax.

Even on land, producing oil is dangerous. I can go on and on about cancer allies, but lets take a look at incidents like Katrina. Millions of crude oil spilled into the city, costing the tax-payer millions of dollars too clean it up, but the company who produces the oil did not pay a single dime in the clean up. This is why I strongly promote green taxes, or ecotaxes, because these taxes drive companies to push to produce less pollution.

America needs to find an alternative to oil fast. We must provided greener jobs. The problem is that oil plays a large role in everything. Oil is in our cars, paints, tires, toothbrushes, etc.

Continuing of using cars demands more oil. America can still make a change. We can drive less, carpool, and use public transportation. The cut back on cars is very beneficial, it helps the environment, economy, and it battles global warming.

Can we use electric and hybrid cars? Remembering that there are seven gallons of oil in every tire and oil in the paint, these cars are not completely free of oil. However, cars can be manufactured from recycled material and the oil can be replaced by other forms of biofuel, such as algae, used cooking oil, and hemp. The materials that make the car can bee made from oils like algae instead of crude oil.

However, oil is in nearly everything so we can do more than focus on saving fuel for our cars. What about plastic? Petroleum is used to make plastic, and we make 200 million plastic bags every day. Sadly, less than 1% of that is recycled. The rest is out floating in the ocean or siting in a landfill not degrading. Several food markets are no selling reusable bags, or charging customers per plastic bag to encourage them to bring their own bags. Paper bags are not a better option, bearing in mind that millions of acres of trees are cut down every day to make such bags. So the only option is to use reusable bags, or plastic bags not made with petroleum that are biodegradable. Perf Go Green was developed in response to this.

Will we ever run out of oil? Many scientists, geographers, lawyers, economists, etc. think we might and soon, perhaps they are right. They have proposed a theory based on science and mathematics called Peak-Oil. That is, in a shape of a bell curve, when oil production has reached its zenith, oil productivity will permanently begin to decline. Even former CEO of Chevron, the largest oil company, even came out and said that oil is becoming harder and harder to find. Lets say that oil does run out, what will happen? Thankfully we have seen what happens when a country that is dependent on oil loses it all. When communist Russia collapsed, the two countries that were affected were North Korea and Cuba. Each was dependent on Soviet oil. Korea suffered dearly, cars did not run, planes didn’t fly, mail was not delivered, food was not transported, etc. Cuba however did not suffer. The Cuban government told all their citizens to plant and grows their own food. If anyone found a patch of land that was unattended, the person would be responsible to farm it. Cuba was growing food everywhere, in their backyards, on streets, on their roofs, even in flower pots. Everything was organic and local, and Cuba was eating healthier then they ever have. They were free from industrial agriculture. Cuba thrived. That is what we will most likely encounter when oil supply becomes low and prices sky rocket. Everything will be local and communities will work together. However, lets say Peak-Oil was inaccurate, does it make a difference? Just because oil may never run out does not mean it should remain the source of our energy.

Do I think Peak-Oil is true? Science magazine, documentaries, and top oil companies are saying it is true. Even oil banker Matthew Simmons agrees with peak oil and has testified before Congress. Saudi Arabia is home to the largest oil reserve in the world. It provides 25% of the world's oil. However, why are they moving and investing into off-shore drilling? Off-shore drilling demands massive amounts of labor and money, you would rather go to the moon. If the Saudis are moving to off-shore drilling, doesn't that seem as if they are aware that their oil is running out? Of curse, the Saudis don't dare announce they are past their peak-oil, otherwise there would be a revolution, and if a revolution takes place in the country that provides the world with 25% of it's oil, then we are screwed. And given the recent events, the revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, it seems very likely revolution will hit Saudi Arabia. Once America cannot get it's oil, we will ave no choice but to find an alternative energy source.

Do alternatives to petroleum oil exist? Absolutely! They do exist, and they have for a long time. We are expanding their efficiency and technology, we continue to search for multiple new alternatives. Many alternative sources of energy for cars have been presented (water, hydrogen, ethanol, etc.) but I think the three that stands out the most is algae, coking oil and hempoil.

Algae is exactly that which became the oil we suck out of the planet. But we do not plan to wait 15 million years for algae to turn into oil, since we can turn it into sustainable and effective oil in about 3-10 days! What they do is grow and collect energy and convert it into oil. A petri dish of algae cells can turn into liters of oil in a matter of days. These cells have double and reproduce overtime to create a full tank of fuel in about 10 days. The oil from algae can be used for biofuel, plastics, ammonia, and virtually everything we use petroleum for. Where and how do you grow and collect algae. Algae can grow in all types of water: fresh, salt, ocean, dirty, etc. Building algae farms adjacent to factories is a great start, since carbon-dioxide is algae food and natural gas and carbon factories provide plenty of that (in fact, they account for about 50% of the green house gases). We can build algae farms adjacent to the factories and we do not have to modify them in anyway. Collecting algae from 1700 power plant algae farms can produce enough oil equal to 25% of the nations fuel demand. Biofeul must come from waste. A company known as PetroSun is currently working to build ponds next to waste facilities. The waste put in these ponds is food for algae, where it can be collected and turned into oil. Do you know how much money the city pays just to get rid of that stuff? Norway already has a system that converts its waste into energy, why don't we? It has been estimated that 10 years of fuel from waste to algae farms can equal all of Alaska's oil.

Algae oil has many other benefits, including nutrition, fertilizer, and can even be a very useful anti-pollution tool. How much land is required too harvest enough algae oil to sustain us? It has been estimated that 10 million acres of land would need to be used for biodiesel cultivation in the US in order to produce biodiesel to replace all the petrodiesel used currently in that country. This is just 1% of the total land used today for farming and grazing together in the US (about 1 billion acres). This site shows the math that can be done with just investing in algae oil in a 250 acre area. To get America off foreign oil, Michael Briggs concluded that 140,800,000,000 (140.8 billion) gallons of biodiesel could replace 100% of the petroleum transportation fuels consumed in the United States annually, without requiring a big change in driving behavior or automotive technology. The math divides that by 10 million acres to 250. Each 250 acre area must produce at least 15,000 gallons every year, which is not that much since this CNN report of Glen Kertz, president and CEO of Valcent Products, " Kertz said he can produce about 100,000 gallons of algae oil a year per acre, compared to about 30 gallons per acre from corn; 50 gallons from soybeans." So producing enough algae oil to meet all ends for foreign and domestic oil does not take a lot of room or effort, but it does require a lot of support and political and financial backing. Not only does it take less land to make sustainable fuel, it requires a lot less water. how much? 350 gallons of water per gallon of oil -- or a quarter of what the country currently uses for irrigated agriculture -- would be needed to produce that much algal biofuel (further explained here). So algae seems to hold a lot of potential, so I would highly recommend investing in algae oil.

In a future blog, I will discuss America's food problem. But just briefly, fast food restaurants can be found in every city in every state. Restaurants use cooking oil to make food, but what do with it afterwards? They toss it. Several projects are being initiated in several cities, like New York, to have trucks go around town collected these wastes and turning it into biofuel. To make biofuel, all you need is the 90% of cooking oil (grease), 9.9% alcohol, and 0.1% lyre and presto you have biofuel. Can you imagine if every restaurant in every town was mandated to rather just tossing their used oil to donate it to a company that would convert it into biofuel? Massive massive amounts of extra fuel for transportation, prices go down, and we have saved lots of waste into something beneficial.

What about hemp? Hemp is a very very useful resource of man. You can use it to make food, clothing, houses, and biofuel. But why is hemp illegal? It should never have been illegal in the first place. The main reason why people do not see hemp in a bright light is due to the false presumption that the hemp plant is the same as marijuana. Since the war on drugs, marijuana had been criminalized, which I will address later on, but alongside marijuana people feared hemp as well. The top paper and oil industries ran smear campaigns against industrial hemp, and they won but they did not do so fairly.

What we are currently doing is collecting biofuels from timber, which leads to deforestation. In response, we have developed these trees called megafloras, which are trees that can mature in three years, be cut down and a new tree can grow from the stump. Clever way to grow trees and prevent deforestation, while absorbing carbon dioxide and producing biofuels. Megafloras also absorb the heavy metals from the land, like selenium and borone, put in there by man. Due to modern agriculture, spraying fertilizers and other chemicals into the land, we have turned the soil into a junkie, so megafloras can be very beneficial. The leading company of this project in Emerald Energy. Megafloras can clean the land, and it has been calculated that 10 years of fuel from California's megaflora trees can equal all drilling of oil in Alaska. However, when considering the growth rate of hemp, which is a few weeks compared to megaflora's three years, hemp is a clear winner. Growing hemp can also prevent deforestation. Hemp does not require pesticides.

Hemp can be used for food. After the oil is collected from the seeds, the seeds can still be used to make food, so hemp can produce biofuels and combat global hunger. Hemp can also be used for cloths and fabrics.

The bottom line is America needs to end its addiction to oil and renewable energy is the solution. Biofuels is not the whole solution, and I will discus multiple possible solutions in future blogs. Renewable energy collected by solar and wind is a must. Wind is cheap (3 cents per kWh), which is much cheaper than coal, natural gas and nuclear (all over 5 cents per kWh). Solar power is a no-brainer. If every house had a solar panel, then every house will be an entrepreneur and American will become richer and produce their own power. Solar panels put the power from big corporations into the hands of the common man. Isn't that part of the American dream?

Americans need to change their habits. It starts off with the individual. Change your light bulbs to florescent, get replace your old appliances with new ones that use less energy, get a green car, carpool, or even don't use a car and use public transportation or bike. Call your legislator, senators, and mayors. Change your politicians, especially with those who have a green vision and ambition for America and who are not bought buy big oil corporations.