Energy monger

Have you ever thought about new energy sources? I was reading about bio-diesel as an alternative auto motive fuel a few months ago and was pretty excited about the prospects of freeing ourselves from dependency on foreign oil, which is a pretty popular idea these days. I find the topic interesting and have often thought that it is a simple solution to a complex problem.
Did you know who invented the Diesel engine? Rudolf Diesel was an ingenious inventor and he wanted to design an internal combustion engine that required no spark but ignited the fuel by means of compression. He also wanted to make an engine that would allow farmers and craftsmen to be free from the shackles of industry. He wanted and engine that could use vegetable oil and grain alcohol as fuel thereby allowing a farmer to grow a portion of his crops for fuel and be self-sustaining. Rudolf’s dream was practical socially and culturally but impractical from an engineering standpoint in 1890. Fast forward 115 years and now we have the technology to produce high quality bio-diesel fuel from corn oil and grain alcohol however the social-economic structure is such that mixing the sources of food and fuel would be akin to shitting where you sleep. Look at it this way: A farmer would not be satisfied just converting a portion of his crops to fuel when lack of supply drives fuel prices higher than food prices, in-fact the government is paying subsidies to keep more food being produce then the farmer can sell. The laws of supply and demand would mean that the cost of foreign oil would not only affect the cost of fuel but also the cost of food. There would be an abrupt reversal of the downwardly spiraling agricultural industry and the DOA would struggle to enforce measures to prevent massive strip harvesting of crops that could decimate the fertility of Americas farmland each year.

Americans use energy to get away. We live further away from work and we vacation further away from home. Some day when we realize the truth of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity we will unlock the huge stores of energy contained within each atom of matter. The Earth will be destroyed as we use its mass-turned-to-energy to launch ourselves into space in search of a place, a nice spot in the suburbs of the galaxy, to call home.