Gas just hit 3.12$ a gallon. I just ran out of cash. So I'm stuck at home or on the bus. It costs me more to get one gallon of gas to drive eighteen or nineteen miles--if I'm lucky--than it does to buy a meal. Oddly enough, I'm not really shocked, I'll grumble, but I've known for most of the past five years that the price of gas would one day skyrocket--and that that day would be during my lifetime. And I don't think I'm alone in having known that--why then, did we let it get this bad? That's a question I can't answer--but I will point out that we have access to a solution right now. A semi-permanent solution that would not only lower gas prices in the next few years, but also start weaning us off the product, help protect the environment and reduce US dependance on foreign oil. That solution? Biodiesel.
Biodiesel is created using lye, used cooking oil and ethanol. The process of 'cooking' up a gallon or two is relatively simple--and can be accomplished safely in a well ventilated garage by most people if they are given a little bit of time and education. The benefits? Biodiesel runs in almost any diesel engine on the market today--this includes diesel cars and trucks as well as semi's, trains and barges--some of our most fuel expensive forms of transport. So we could transfer those vehicles to biodiesel, thus reducing the demand for fuel and in turn it's price. Biodiesel is clean burning--more than a 75% reduction in emissions when compared to petroluem, it is also biodegradable and much safer to store, transport and use than traditional petroluem due to it's limited combustion outside of the engine. Co-ops around the nation are already producing biodiesel, the cost of the average gallon? 2.25$.
Why then are we not jumping as fast as we can to this solution? Maybe it's because most of us really don't care--until gas runs out (literally) we have no reason to do anything other than complain. And maybe it's time to change that, maybe it's about time we started looking at viable, usable, energy solutions today--such as biodiesel.
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Recent polls have shown that Americans really aren't going to start changing their driving habits until gas gets up to 6 dollars/gallon. Until then, I don't think gas-guzzling vehicles are going to be changed except for by the few who realize that the Earth's natural resources aren't infinitely replenishable and that the price of gas will keep going up.
get a hybird
That only solves an individuals gas price problems. We need to look at this as a society.
~CallieV