Why isn't the U.S looking for an alternate source of fuel?

Question

I mean gas prices are rising slowly and people are getting fed up. But don't you think that the smart thing to do is start researching for another source of fuel?

Answer 1

because money talks

the government is made of rich people, they only care about making more money, that is why busy and his people even want to open some oil wells in alsaka, etc

it is good for the enviorment, but it is not good for the rich oil companies, they just want more money, so they don't want to waste their time looking for alternative energy

if people start to use other energy source, all those big oli companies will be forced to close, after all they have invested a lot on those infrastructures

Answer 2

Gas, oil and coal are still cheap compared to the alternatives.  When the alternatives become cost-effective the market will move in that direction.

Answer 3

their is too much profit in oil

Answer 4

actually they are, in even crappier coal

Answer 5

well 1) oil tycoons are making BIG bucks from the oil, so why stop?

2) it's easier to keep using oil then getting off our @$$es to look for a better source of fuel and most importantly

3) it's a simple case of SUPPLY AND DEMAND! if people would boycott the gas prices and use less gas then we'd save resources, money and we'd actually get some exercise! but until people show they really care and go against the grain of the oil companies, things will stay the same :o(

Answer 6

You're sitting around waiting for the government to do it!?  :-o

THIS government!??  

Forget it, do it yourself.   Here are some things you can do.  For some, you need skills, but you can learn it.

Totally easy:

- Find a co-op around that sells B100 biodiesel. Switch to a diesel car (VW, Mercedes, Isuzu or many domestic pickup trucks.)

- Help co-op find sources of waste veggie oil from restaurants.

- If you do a lot of trips that are "in town" on <35 mph roads, buy a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle.

- Help invest in green power via TerraPass or CarbonFund or any way you can.

People skills:

- Help organize and set up a biodiesel co-op.

- Do grassroots promotion of alternative energy.

- Find local non-profits that use fuel, and persuade them to use biodiesel, SVO or electric.

Modest technical skills:

- Do an energy audit of your house. Find ways to save energy.

- Design and spec a solar or wind-power system for your house.

- Brew biodiesel yourself.

Fair technical skills and some learning:

- Modify a diesel car to run SVO.

- Convert an old gas-guzzler to a very basic electric car, good for around town. (45 mph or so top speed, 20-30 mile range.)

- Design a naturally efficient home (such as an earth-sheltered home) and have it built.

More skills, more learning, more cost:

- Convert a car to a more advanced electric car, with freeway speed and 60+ mile range.

Thousands of people have done each of these things.  

Now, if you're REALLY sharp, explore new ground.

- Upgrade your electric to a "series hybrid" which gets 100mpg!  

- Help electric-vehicle enthusiasts perfect an AC motor controller, to use more powerful AC motors.

Answer 7

There are plenty of very smart people trying, trust me.

The problems are two fold:

#1 - It's very hard to compete with the energy density of gasoline.  (1 gallon of gasoline contains the energy equivalent of approximately 400 pounds of lead acid batteries)

#2 - Cost.  For almost the entire 20th century, you could buy a gallon of gasoline cheaper than you could buy a gallons worth of bottled drinking water.  (Still is true in most places)

But people are working on reducing the energy required to make ethanol, reducing the cost of lightweight lithium ion batteries (like the ones in your cell phone and laptop), and there is ongoing research to see if stored hydrogen will be a less expensive storage medium to produce than batteries.

In the mean time, look for a used hybrid, a diesel

Volkswagen, or just a good economical small car like a Honda Civic.

Or you could always break out the old 10 speed (bicycle, that is) or try to reduce the places you "have to" drive to.

Progress is happening, it just won't be overnight.  

Good luck!

Answer 8

Too much work and too little money to make. Its much easier to attack Iraq.

Answer 9

Rent - " Who killed the electric car"

It will make you mad and sad all at the same time..

Answer 10

The truth is that they are looking into aleternate fuel sources-there are cars ran on water, electric, and solar, however the oil companies are paying them to keep it under wraps-they make more money.

Answer 11

you really think that we are not looking , or have found alternative sources of fuel?really?

Answer 12

We are. The oil companies might not be. The oil President from Texas that's best friends with the Saudi royal family, he isn't looking for it. Hint to all voting U.S. citizens. If you don't like paying high gas prices, don't elect an oil man for president, and don't do it twice in a row!

As for alternate fuel, if you go with corn or any other grain that's use for livestock feed or humans, the price of that commodity will rise drastically and the price at the grocery store will rise. The price of the hogs, cattle, chicken all will rise. No long term financial savings there.

One guy on this site gave the best answer I've heard so far as the solution to this whole gas price problem :"I drive a diesel jetta, 43 mpg." Brilliant.

Answer 13

Yes, mate. There has already been another means of fuel. the ideas have been around for about 7 years. Your ****** of a president, I do beleive  his name is Bush, has just been to stupid and cowardly to annouce to the people that there is an alternate means of fuel. He just wants to continue your dumb war, so he can have something to do. Without it he would be bored and fired. But to let you know, there are at least 3 diff means of fuel. Left over cooking grease is one of them. Batteries is another. and I think more smaller fuel efficent cars are one, too.

Answer 14

It has to do with "Big Oil" and the control it has on the political influence.  If the oil companies can find something as profitable as oil, they will jump at the chance.  We could have cars that get 60+ miles per gallon, but then less oil would be sold, and less profit for "Big Oil".  The technology is there, and we just keep polluting the air because here in the U.S. if we have a problem we just throw money at it and then everything is O.K. Soon they will announce "record profits" and we will all groan and just dig deeper in our pockets.  If the oil companies would get behind renewable fuels, we could decrease the pollution from cars and trucks.

Answer 15

they are, to an extent, but it's not as easy as it seems... An they don't have as much to gain from it as they do just burning up the planet... gear w. bush is stupid, and so greedy he is willing to sacrafice the world for his own personal gain for money.

Answer 16

The research is there, the technology has been developed for years.  Problem is everyone is scared to speak out against  government policy because they are afraid of being called unpatriotic or a terrorist.  And given the Patriot Act and would say you should be.  Rock the boat too hard and you'll end up like Timothy McVey.

Answer 17

Everyone wants price performance.  In the case of gasoline, nothing yet can compete with the energy-to-unit-price of gas. This means its high energy density says it is small and light for the huge amount of power you can get out of it.

The low price at the pump is difficult to ignore.  Unfortunately, it's artificially low because it's not a free market.  We subsidize oil with $Billions.  We also spend $Billions to secure the oil industry's worldwide drilling and shipping infrastructure.  This makes gas seem cheap in comparison to any alternatives that don't get such preferential benefits.

Answer 18

They are but in the wrong way and their plans are going to devastate what is left of Nature ,in a way worse than anything ever before in the quest for Ethanol.

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service



Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...

Answer 19

They have already found an alternative source of fuel....They just haven't required ALL fueling stations to carry it yet. There are ethanol stations scattered in the U.S., but not too awfully many of them. Ethanol only costs $1.30 to make, yet the money hungry oil boys aren't going to have any of that while they're in office.  All republicans are...are money hungry scoundrels...The pick pocket hard working tax payers for everything they've got...LEGALLY!!! We need to get someone like Al Gore in office who sounds like they are passionate about the people & environment. He's been trying to spread the word about global warming & alternative fuel sources for years, but no one took him serious. Until he became VP, and ran for president. Now everyoe is listening...

They are talking about an alternative fuel made from rice & soybeans, but we'll see what happens with that. Ethanol is already available to some people in a few different states. Look it up on your search engine to see where they are located.

Answer 20

changing to alternative fuel for such a highly populated country is a challenge if there ever was one. slowly, we are looking towards alternative fuel sources. But there are other things being done. Fro instance, in either 2008 or 2009, we (us...the U.S.) will be inporting those extemely tiny European cars that get about 50-60 mpg.

Answer 21

They are, just not as much as we COULD be. Bio-fuels, electric cars, hybrid cars, etc are being invested in as we speak.

But oil is cheap to drill and to produce compared with other energy methods. Also, do you realize how expensive research is? The government does realize we are polluting the planet and they'd love to have a magical cure for all our oil woes, but they don't. And they also don't feel like spending billions on alternative fuels when they could use that money for other government programs.

It's like normal Jack, who could help out the environment AND save on gas if only he would buy a hybrid or electric car for an extra couple thousand dollars more. Sounds great, but Jack could save that extra couple thousand dollars NOW, and get just as neat of a car, albeit one that gets less miles per gallon.

It's all in how you look at the future and where you want to spend your money, wise or not.

Answer 22

But then George W and d**k Cheney's boys in big oil wouldn't be making as much money! We can't have that!

Answer 23

Because Bush is a ********.

And yes, I believe that is the smart thing to do, I heard of a car that runs on veggies!