There was a time in America when Kennedy and Nixon had a debate, and it was not about who was doing the Conservative thing and who was doing the Liberal thing. It was about who was doing the RIGHT thing.
In the Kennedy Nixon debate they BOTH talked about Hydroelectric infrastructure (renewable energy) that would bring jobs to Americans. Nixon did have a conservative argument in that he said "I spend less money and still bring nice infrastructure" while Kennedy said he wanted America to become more innovative and robust than ever.
They BOTH cared about the welfare of the people. They BOTH knew that America was only as strong as its weakest link. But at some point, Americans decided that if someone was poor, it was THEIR fault.
LBJ made a speech about "The War on Poverty" and nothing has really happened since. Obama even mentioned it on the anniversary of the speech and people were stunned. Not even a single clap from what I could hear.
No one seems to even understand what a war on poverty would look like, so they just brush it under the rug and act as if their is some individual flaw of each failed person that made them that way.
When BOTH parties cared about infrastructure and jobs, America was booming, winning basically. Not creating terrorists and debt around the world. But now we have fallen in to a hole.
Oil has us chasing our tail, and innovation has been stifled. McCain says "Russia is just a gas station masquerading as a country" and I am afraid that our leaders idolize that idea unknowingly.
SAd thing is, we do not ned Middle Eastern, Russian or any import oil at all.
The USA EXPORTS OIL!
It is easier however to simply export brave American service men and women as cannon fodder to protect our "interests" (Read" "OIL INTERESTS") than to break our dependence on foregin oil..
Dueing WWII, which in point of fact ENDED nearly 70 years ago, a substatial portion of the fuel supply of the Germans came from SYNTHETIC OIL.
Now if the Nazis could do it that far back, why can't we now?
WTF is wrong with us?
Thank you for your ingitful and accurate post!
We could run millions of cars on methanol, the fourth largest industrial chemical, available for about $1 per gasoline gallon equivalent, within a couple weeks of the decision to do so.
This is not complicated.
Yeah but do your homework on methanol.
It ain't that pretty at all.
I disagree. However, suppose we had been running our cars on Chemical XYZ, and someone tried to get us to use "gasoline." Given today's regulatory and risk averse environment, I bet you couldn't get gasoline introduced.
As it was, it was introduced because of maximum hydrogen bonds, max energy, high fuel density, etc. and it is the standard. Methanol has certain disadvantages, but these are easily handled and at minimal cost. There are millions of cars running it in China. There was a large study IIRC in New York using several thousand vehicles in the mid 1980s on methanol.
The big thing about methanol is that it's an easy way to take natural gas and move it around in a liquid form, instead of complex high pressure piping and tankage. Other fuels may also be derived from natural gas with a few more process steps such as dimethyl ether, an acceptable substitute for diesel fuel. Obviously, methanol (CH3OH) is the simplest and easiest liquid fuel that can be produced from natural gas, largely methane (CH4).
Greenies would find methanol acceptable, but only if it came from "renewables." And that's nonsense, because as the fourth largest produced industrial chemical, we can buy bargeloads today at a very low competitive street price.
