Oil has been the one major factor for war in the past 40 years across the world. America has honored the brave soldiers that have volunteered to serve and protect our great nation.
Just think if we never had started using oil: The Middle East would never have meant more to us other than just that dirty desert place. If it wasn’t for corporate monopoly of the Standard Oil in the early 1900’s pushing the U.S. government to ban alcohol and make it illegal to produce ethanol which was our first mainstream fuel of the 20th Century, who knows what the industry would look like.
Think if we learned our lesson during the Oil crisis of the 1970’s. Imagine if Osama Bin Laden hadn’t started his campaign to keep America out of the Middle East oil rich nations.
Oil has been the factor for all these points of history and has snowballed into the first Iraq War, then Afghanistan and last but not least, the second Iraq War. What has Oil given us for over a hundred years of loyal use? Dead brave Americans whose only wish were to serve our country and protect it. It’s sad to think how many lives we’ve sent to war for this dirty fluid we call oil.
Now here we are in 2012, gas prices higher than ever and no end in sight. Who do we have to blame for all the Americans that died for Oil?
Me! Blame me. I've pumped gas in my car since I was old enough to drive. Now I drive a "big rig" and pump 200 gallons of diesel fuel in it every two days. Why you ask? Because, that is the only thing we have available as a fuel source. But I’m taking all the blame. The rest of you can take some of the blame too. Every American for the past 100 plus years has helped create our current situation. But you know what? I’m tired of killing our young Americans for oil.
This past week one of my beloved nephews shipped out to do his first tour in Afghanistan. He’s a big guy now and his dad posted a picture of him all dressed up in his camouflage the other day and it made me go back to when he was just a baby. The whole idea of this petrifies our entire family, as it does for every family who send their brave kids off to war. So why do we still continue use oil if we know the requirement to maintain the supply for our gas tanks is more dead young Americans? When do we begin to stop counting bodies for barrels?
America has to start changing now. Cars need to run on fuels other than gasoline; trucks need to run on fuels other than diesel. The Open Fuel Standard facilitates this change and then we need to expand the availability of cost effective fuels such as advanced biofuels like ethanol, methanol, and biodiesel and stop using fossil fuel. We have the technological expertise and the land to develop these new fuel sources -- don’t let oil companies tell us different. Get with it America and don’t let more of our babies die for the big oil company’s profits.
Alan Anderson is a freelance writer focusing on green renewable alternative fuels such as E100 ethanol and biodiesel. He has written in many online publications including Newsvine.com and been featured in Ethanol Producer Magazine. Alan is in the beginning stages of forming a non-profit organization for the promotion of sugar ethanol, E100 and biodiesel here in the US.
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