As a practical matter, the United States is financing both sides of the global conflict. The spike in oil prices since 2001 costs the United States an extra $200 billion per year - much of it going to regimes that support terrorist groups and ideologies.
A jihadist website hails this development:
"The killing of 10 American soldiers is nothing compared to the impact of the rise in oil prices on America and the disruption that it causes in the international economy."
Where the money goes: Saudi Arabia uses its petrodollars, garnered from this country and elsewhere, to build its Islamist infrastructure - including: building and operating Wahhabi "Islamic centers" and schools; recruiting students, imprisoned convicts and military personnel; and, not least, funding terror organizations.
The same is true, to a lesser extent of other Islamofascist state-sponsors of terror. For example, Iran's oil revenues support its Shiite version of Islamism and underwrite some of the world's most dangerous terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah.
It is reckless for the United States to allow oil to remain a strategic commodity - that is, a product whose disruption can hold our economy hostage and jeopardize our national security - especially when many of the suppliers of that commodity are determined to do us harm.
What Needs to Be Done
We must reduce the strategic importance of oil in the global economy, to be interchange-able with other energy resources. Today, the transportation sector accounts for two-thirds of oil consumption.
The Set America Free Coalition presents a blueprint for transforming the US transportation sector to halve US oil consumption by 2025 by promoting non-petroleum, next-generation fuels - and vehicles designed to use them
1. Create Fuel Choice: When it comes to filling the fuel tank, American consumers have no real choice. And if petroleum supplies are ever disrupted, we have no fallback option.
Vehicles: All new cars should be flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs), designed to run on gasoline or alcohol-based fuels (ethanol and methanol) or a combination.
Fuels:
- Ethanol (grain alcohol) can be produced domestically from fermented agricultural products, including corn. Feedstocks other than corn can be converted to ethanol, without the need for substantial government subsidy. Current research is developing processes to convert "cellulosic biomass" (from grasses) into ethanol.
- Processes already exist to produce ethanol from sugar cane - currently used extensively in Brazil. By encouraging low-cost sugar cane producers to increase their output and become major fuel suppliers, we could reduce our reliance on oil from unstable or hostile sources while greatly enhancing the US posture in the Western Hemisphere.
- Methanol (wood alcohol). Methanol is produced mostly from natural gas. Greatly expanded domestic production can be achieved, however, by producing methanol from other materials. Coal which we have in abundance can also be converted into clean liquid fuels (methanol can be commercially produced for fifty cents a gallon; the proven Fisher Tropsch technology produces diesel and jet fuel from coal).
- Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) look and perform much like regular hybrid cars, but they can be charged to run on electricity by plugging into an ordinary 120-volt outlet - up to 60 miles per charge.
- PHEVs can reach fuel economy levels of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline consumed.
- Moreover, a plug-in vehicle designed to use alternative fuels (say, 80% alcohol and 20% gasoline) might achieve fuel economy as high as 500 miles per gallon of gasoline.
- The administration and Congress should encourage the purchase of plug-in hybrid vehicles, through rebates and tax credits to buyers.
3. Stretch a gallon still further. In the last three decades, the American economy has grown nearly five times faster than energy use - proof that conservation can go hand-in-hand with increases in productivity. Encouraging conservation must be a central ingredient in our War Footing strategy.
Individual initiatives. The most immediate measures to improve the efficiency of America's automobile fleet are in the hands of individual motorists:- properly inflating tires
- tuning the engine
- maintaining air filters
- removing excess weight from the trunk
- driving at a steady pace
- consolidating trips
- choosing to take the "broadband highway" to work, using the Internet to telecommute from a home office
- Better materials. Reducing the weight and drag of a vehicle need not require reducing its size or safety, but it can greatly increase gas mileage. Cars made from advanced composites and next-generation steels can roughly halve fuel consumption without compromising size, safety, performance, or cost effectiveness.
- Modern diesels. Hybrid diesel engines can combine the benefits of both technologies to reach even higher efficiency gains.
- New technologies are available to utilize non-fossil sources (including waste materials) for diesel production.
- An innovative biodiesel fuel can be commercially produced from soybeans and other vegetable oils.
No comments:
Post a Comment