Just like an Anderson resident and crystal meth, the U.S. is nauseatingly addicted to oil. I don't need to lament on how towering energy costs affect everything. From the clothes you buy to the food you eat - gasoline is the glue that holds our economy together.
As we know, this binding glue is probably running out, is too expensive and is pumped out of the ground by some of the most nefarious people in the world.
Nonetheless, immediate solutions exist that can remedy this crisis.
I call this solution (you need to be sitting for this) the 8-Track Energy Plan.
This plan does not involve eight tracks, but it is analogous to the 8-Track.
For decades, the music industry used wax records as the primary means in which to distribute audio recordings. Records were cheap and easy to mass-produce. However, the quality of the sound diminished each time the needle passed over the grooves. The record had become outdated. A new solution was needed.
This solution came in the early '70s. Philips was experimenting with digital audio, but the technology would not be available for a while. A transitional medium was desired. Luckily the 8-Track had been invented during the mid '60s. These technologies, along with its more popular relative the "cassette," were the transitional mediums we needed.
By the 1990s, the music industry had gone to CDs and by the new millennium the digital switch had been complete with MP3s. Digital files never wear out and do not require physical space for storage - only "space" on a hard drive.
Comparable to this is our energy needs. One day, probably generations from now, the world will be fueled by hydrogen. The raw material (water) is virtually free.
Yet, the technology of today is atrociously too far from yielding energy from hydrogen efficiently.
Still, like the 8-Tracks long ago, we can use intermediary solutions to wean us off oil until a hydrogen economy is sufficiently developed:
1. Efficient Vehicles. This includes hybrid vehicles and any other combustion engine vehicle that makes use of highly efficient processes.
In addition, Americans need to stop buying SUVs.
I know some people need to compensate for minuscule genitalia, but I don't think SUVs are the answer. Unless you work in the Colorado Rockies or have 8 kids, an I-4 economy car will do just fine.
2. Speaking of economy cars, solution 2 requires the use of alcohol, specifically ethanol. Many tout that our energy needs can be adequately met with ethanol. This is not entirely true. If every cornfield in the nation converted to produce corn for ethanol, it would only displace about 10 percent of our energy needs. Yet think of it like donating plasma: It's a good way to subsidize income. Brazil will be energy independent within a year due to ethanol distilled from sugar cane. Why aren't we?
3. Mass Transit. Better bus routes, subways, and even inter-city high-speed light rail. The right of way exists along state and federal highways to take land and build light train routes. If a train existed along I-69, many would leave Ball State University for Indy every weekend.
With the exception of the high-speed rail, all of these solutions can be done on local and personal levels. Local communities can support Ag-Parks that are ethanol producers.
Gov. Daniels wants to make "Indiana the Texas of alternative fuels." He actually is doing this and we should fully support him. We can purchase rice-burners as our next cars.
Finally, we can all lobby Pence and others to find funding for trains and mass transit.
These things can reduce our dependence on gasoline and we can notify OPEC that they can eat their oil.
Write that down.
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