For many years, America, blessed with the abundance of resources and optimism required to fuel the American Dream, thrived beyond expectation. However, over the past decade or so, many of us have witnessed our resources dwindling, felt our very lifestyles threatened, and seen our American Dreams fading. As a result, we are in the midst of an internal war against corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, and lack of foresight and fortitude. We have come to rely on foreign governments, many of which sadly disdain us, to finance our deficits and supply us with oil – the lifeblood of an industrial nation. Many of us no longer believe that we are masters of our own destiny, and sadly, some of us may have even given up.
Flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) boost the supply-to-demand ratio by giving consumers access to a greater supply of fuels (ethanol, methanol, gas, and electricity) while slashing oil consumption. The net effect would be a more reliable and affordable supply of fuels. A PHEV, for example, could run 20-60 miles on a single charge for 1-3 cents per mile and then switch to flex fuel (say 80 percent alcohol-based, 20 percent gas) to achieve nearly 500 miles per gallon of gas.
The opportunity to turn the production of fuel over to producers (from farming and waste products) is uniquely attractive to America’s entrepreneurial sensibilities. Doing so affords a chance for Asia and the Americas to change the financial dynamics of their economies and begins to shift the political and economic power of energy back into the hands of producers, which here in the U.S. means millions of new jobs and an additional quarter trillion dollars a year pumped into our own economy. As a result, consumers would be able to vary the fuel mixture at the pump to get the most affordable mix based on current prices of oil, ethanol, and methanol, and entrepreneurs—not big government—would be in a position to jumpstart and reform our economy.
Please do as I have: Contact your elected representatives in Washington, D.C., and ask them to support the Open Fuel Standards Act., The Act, which would require 50 percent of new cars sold in the United States by 2012, and 80 percent by 2015, to be flex fuel vehicles, is scheduled to be reintroduced in the 111th Congress within the next 30 days .
Great post. We all need to do our part to make the world a better place. Your idea makes a lot of sense to me.
Yesterday was a big day for the biofuels industry. President Obama issued a presidential directive to the USDA to expand access for biofuels that includes $800 million to fuel biofuels research. The purpose of the directive, in part, is to aggressively accelerate the investment and production of biofuels. What the directive does not do, is set dollars aside to help improve the infrastructure for higher ethanol blends including E85 although it encourages production of more flex-fuel vehicles.
This announcement appears to be serious, at least as serious as a government proclamation can really be– they created another committee to oversee that the presidential directive. The USDA, EPA and DOE will form a Biofuels Interagency Working Group with a mission to increase energy independence in part through the development of the nation’s first comprehensive biofuels market development program.
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Drilling down into the old staving off inflation topic: the contenders… swiss 20 franc against some 10 ounce silver bars. Any opinions?