Our Economy is Bleeding and We Can Stop It

When you triage a badly wounded patient, you first look for an obstruction of the airway, respiratory failure, heart failure, massive external bleeding and shock.  In the case of our economy, the airway is ok, we have respiratory distress but not failure and the heart is still working but we have several massive gushing wounds that need to be treated in order to stabalize the patient before we begin treating the rash on our back side caused from sitting on our ass while the rest of the world passes us by in engineering graduates and new innovation. Please read on...

The biggest gushing wound amounts to about $140 billion dollars that bleeds out of our economy each year paying for foreign petroleum.  And that money isn't fueling the global economy, it is going to countries who do not like us and fund terrorism.  Most gas stations make only about .11 cents per gallon of fuel and make most of their money from snacks, service and repairs.  About 96% of what we pay at the pump leaves our economy for good each year.  We have to stop that bleeding any way we can before we can begin to fix the other problems that face us.  Every dollar we save on foreign petroleum stimulates our own economy, improves our national security and helps reduce green house gas emissions.  So, there are three very good reasons to forcefully address the displacement of foreign petroleum.

There are 4 basic ways to accomplish this goal.  One of the four ways is to buy gasoline from companies who do the best job of using domestic supply and import the least amount from countries who finance terrorism.  You can find information on this at the following Terror Free Oil Initiative web site, which lists Sunoco, Hess and Flying J as your best options, if you have them near you:

Terror Free Oil Initiative
http://www.terrorfreeoil.org/...

The remaing 3 best ways to displace foreign petroleum is by Conservation, Efficiency and Renewable domestic energy.  In terms of displacing foreign petroleum, conservation means working from home when you can, doing a better job of planing the way you drive, keeping your engine tuned up, tires inflated and using mass transit, car pooling, walking and using a bicycle when you can.  Greater efficiency can be achieved by using the most fuel efficient car you can find that meets your needs.  Hybrids are great, electric cars are great and you should also look into high mileage turbo diesels, which now use ultra low sulfur diesel fuel and can achieve higher mileage than most hybrid cars.  Renewable domestic energy means biodiesel and ethanol.  Almost every vehicle on the road can use some amount of biodiesel, ethanol or butanol.  Many newer FlexFuel vehicles can use up to 85% ethanol and new diesels can use 100% biodiesel.

Investing in and expanding agriculture has the highest rate of return in terms of stimulating our economy because the money circulates and recirculates in local and regional economies, and creates the most (FTE).  We learned this as we pulled ourselves out of the Great Depression and during the post-war boom in the 1950's but for some reason we keep forgetting it.  Investing and expanding US agriculture to grow and produce domestic renewable biofuels has the double economic benefit of getting the highest rate of return from expanding US agriculture and also keeping billions of dollars in our economy that would otherwise disappear overseas.  

The new ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel has made it possible for new clean diesel vehicles which are just begining to appear in the US market.  These same vehicles running on 100% biodiesel can achieve 100% renewable and virtually 100% clean emission (including Nox) at a fraction of the cost of hydrogen solutions.  Clean diesel vehichles running on 100% biodiesel are ready for mass production now and can almost immediately affect every transportation sector including cars, trucks, boats, trains etc. and have the biggest positive impact on our economy and environment in the least amount of time and at the lowest short term and long term costs.

In order to stop the most bleeding in our economy, we need to accelerate all of these approaches and in doing so, we can stimulate our economy, improve our national security and help reduce green house gas emissions.  We will create new jobs in the process, but not just in the energy sector, every job sector will be affected because we will be increasing tens of billions of dollars in our economy evey year. What do you think?