Energy: Part 1

For anyone who owns a car, the current situation in the Middle East hits you where it hurts, your wallet. America's dependence on foreign oil is nothing new, its just that now we are almost irreversably in Middle Eastern affairs, so our gas prices are going to go up. Unfortunately, it is also Bush's oil cronies that have raised the price of a barrel of oil to over $70, and they are also the ones bringing the price down again, at least for the time being. This dependence on one, unrenewable resource is dangerous. With the expansion of industrializing nations like India and China, it is entirely likely that we will run out of oil within 60 years, not the 100 to 150 years the oil companies tell us. The same goes with coal. A significant portion of the United States is still powered by coal, and it is said, by the coal companies, that there is a 200 year supply. Again, with competition from larger industrialized nations like China and India, the supply is probably only half that size.

So what can be done? Brazil is a prime example. Here is a nation, which after the first oil crisis in the 1970's, implemented laws to integrate ethanol, extracted from its sugar crops, into the fuel supply. Brazil is now totally energy independent, and the emissions released from burning the ethanol are equal to the emissions released from the sugar cane plants when they decay naturally, thus making it carbon neutral. This is good for the environment, and it doesn't rely on a resource which will eventually be totally expended.

U.S. automakers, by public demand, have started building vehicles which can run on an ethanol-gas mixture, E-85. The ethanol is extracted from either corn or switch blade grass, the latter of which can produce more energy. This is a good start, but in order to survive into the 21st Century as a major world power, the United States needs to become energy independent, and needs to use a renewable source of energy over oil.

The other option for renewable energy, hydrogen, should take the stage as well. Unlike ethanol, hydrogen doesn't rely on the state of a particular crop to control its supply and demand. Unfortunately, as it stands now, it takes more energy to extract hydrogen from water than what it generates in return, and there are limited reserves of hydrogen in its raw form on Earth. I'll explain that later in "Part II."