I have put much more time into electricity issues than transportation issues, but think there is tremendous room for change within the existing infrastructure. The internet holds the key to a wide variety of alternatives to driving. Shopping by catalogue, online or off, saves a tremendous proportion of the energy used in delivering any product.

People seem to have lost a simple understanding of the value of their own time. Telecommuting, for example, offers energy savings, but it also returns an hour or so per day of personal time to the practitioner. I believe that people working at home will increase sensitivity to and awareness of community quality issues. I found that careful planning of shopping trips, and developing a modest amount of patience, allowed me to cut my overall shopping time in half. Cars have become so comfortable that people need encouragement to understand their cost in terms of time.

I confirmed today my general understanding that U.S. oil consumption is over 24% of world oil consumption. With all the Republican fist-shaking, it is obvious that they are responsible for setting up the circumstances that allowed OPEC to create another production constraint.

So while efficiency can't produce sustainable fuel, neither can we rely on sustainable fuel to emerge from the array of sustainable and unsustainable alternatives that come into play if price is driving the issue. And we can rely on efficiency to reduce the importance of price.

Will other less developed nations consume more oil if the U.S. becomes efficient enough to use less? I guess it depends somewhat on how the U.S. markets its more efficient cars. My preferred scenario is that the "end-of-oil" people are near enough to correct that we see diminishing resources driving price up while we become more efficient, and see a continued pressure on people buying vehicles to reject less efficient ones. After all, what attraction does a 9 mpg used SUV have to a person who cannot afford a new car?

But all of this is a balancing act that we need to understand better, and the more dialogue we have, the better prepared we will be to propose effective change when the nation (and the world) become receptive to change at all.

- Ned

Ned Ford
Vice Chair, National Energy Committee,
Sierra Club

Hi Ned!

Here in Illinois ethanol is available for approximately $1 per gallon, which looks mighty good compared to the price of gas. Furthermore, ethanol is a vast improvement over MTBE, the oil industry’s oxygenate, which is a water polluting, carcinogenic.

We think that Illinois’ 10% ethanol fuel mix is all to the good. It puts far less net carbon into the atmosphere since the plants used to produce it remove carbon from the air and it is significantly cleaner burning so there's less of other pollutants, too.
While the farming process uses oil to produce ethanol the industry is certain that with greater availability ethanol can replace most agricultural uses of oil, too. Lots of Americans aren't aware that much of Brazil’s transportation in, including passenger cars, uses ethanol, which allows Brazil to be far more energy independent than the US. Even the tractors in Brazil run on ethanol.

There’s a lot to be said for working toward US energy independence, especially if we can gain energy efficiencies and a better relationship with the environment in the process. While we certainly recognize oil as a rapidly diminishing resource, we are concerned about more than just the predictably escalating price of oil.

You say that we can’t ignore the economics of energy. We agree—and the latest ethanol production figures show that it produces more energy than is used to produce it. We also agree that efficiencies are the single best way to impact both corporate and homeowner’s bottom-lines right now, but reducing the use of petroleum will help the economy by significantly reducing to our trade deficit, as well as helping the environment

But there’s another aspect of "energy economics." What happens to our overall economy if we don’t have alternatives to gasoline in place when oil prices skyrocket? We’re sure you’ll agree that we must continue to transport at least part of our food and goods. We can understand the desire to get the gas guzzlers off the road, but we’d like to see that happen without sending the larger economy into a tailspin—especially since shattered economies are notoriously bad at supporting environmental solutions

We need ethanol. Ethanol can help resolve other environmental problems. For example, in Illinois corn isn’t grown just to produce ethanol. Ethanol is produced from waste starch that remains from other production processes. Ethanol production can help by generating cash-flow from what would otherwise be an environmental disposal cost. Another great advantage of this fuel is that we don’t need to enroll farmers in this idea. Ethanol is already produced in 55 facilities in the US, and everyone involved is ready to gear up for more production. Analysis shows we could double national production and completely replace MTBE as a fuel additive in just three years.

And, yes, agriculture will also play a major role in carbon sequestration. What wonderful opportunities for farmers to play a number of roles in alleviating global warming and ensuring the nation’s long-term economic stability.

Your letter is also accurate that there are major problems with petroleum based fertilizers and the nitrification of worldwide water supplies. However, at this point we don’t feel that ethanol production is adding much if anything to that already produced by high-tech corn farming. Expect the return to less petroleum intensive farming practices, aided by ethanol and plant based fertilizer, to begin reducing this grave problem as well.

In fact, our position is fairly pragmatic. We support all solutions that offer the possibility of reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. We favor those that also put our economic security on a sound basis and produce oxygen. And we know that there are no perfect solutions.

Meanwhile, we understand that many recent model American cars are able to burn an alternative fuel called E85, which is 85% ethanol and cost just $1.19 a gallon. But it through dialogs, like this one with your organization that we’ll alert many people to this fact and encourage them to discover if their cars can safely use this fuel and find sources of E85. This is something we can do now.

Thanks for your interest, Ned!

Stephen Corrick and Monica Rix Paxson
for Garden Earth Enterprise
http://gardenearth.com

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