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Originally Posted by CptSternn
Screw that. You see the news on Brazil? This year, they will have 0% oil imports. Why? They have found a way to make ethanol from sugar, and have eliminated their need for oil.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=6817
There is a nice article on it there from the WSJ. Wonder why the US doesn't go down that route. I mean, it's kinda sad that Brazil, a nice place to visit, but outside of the tourist areas is a third world country, is able to not only develop a renewable resource to power their country, but were able to do it before the US did.
Iceland powers its whole country through wave power generators.
South Africa uses compressed air powered cars - using no fuel burning at all.
Ireland has the 'green' initive here. By 2050 we plan on being free of all oil/coal/gas fuels. Currently, they are building wind farms across the country and wave farms on the coast. Those, combined with electric and ethynol cars we will use no fossil fuels.
Curious as to why the US doesn't attempt to take these measures and implement them. |
Ok, the reason the US isnt completely oil free and wont be for years is because we have MANY more people than any of those countries you mentioned. We also have a much larger economy, more vehicles and a higher demand for fuel. We are already developing renewable fuel sources. Not ten miles from where I live there is an ethanol plant. And less then twenty-five miles away there will be another one in the next few years (They dont start groundbreaking until like sometime later this year).
Ethanol will work on any vehicle that also burns petrol. The stuff you pump into you car down at the local speedway is already ten percent ethanol. We have petrol stations here in michigan that sell E-85 already. Unfortunately in order to get the stuff you need to process the hell out of your corn. It also takes ALOT of it (or whatever you use) to create a large enough supply of ethanol. Brazil can run its vehicles off ethanol already because they have the farmland and a small enough population for the limited demand that they have. The US is slightly more developed than that, sternn. You need to build new refinaries that can specialy handle the stuff. Then you need to ship it to the very few gas stations that sell it. In the lower penninsula we already have atleast four of those stations.
We also have developed cars that run on fuel cells, on bio-diesel, hydrogen(i have one word for those people, Hindenburg), we now produce hybrid cars. Wind power is often unreliable. You cant build a bunch of wind mills and say "well, we did our part". The weather changes from day to day and you cant expect it to provide enough energy for a city of four million people. There isnt enough places that provide that kind of wind power. In michigan we have many wind generators that catch the air coming off of lake Huron, but an entire town cannot be powered by that. somewhere along the lines there has to be a plant that burns oil/coal to supplement the energy that wind mills dont provide.
So to say that the US isnt even trying is a false and ignorant statement. It seems its alot easier to critisize a nation you know nothing about based on stereotypes and facts that arent even true.