random thoughts on gas

Mostly other people's thoughts but found them oddly connected. Reading WIRED magazine this morning while in the room down the hall (if you know what I mean!) and came across these:

1 - "I refuse to use bioplastic, which comes from something that people can eat. Scientists agree that we have a real food problem, a famine approaching. It's a crime against humanity to take something you can eat and make a chair - or use it as gas for your SUV." designer Phillipe Starck in response to criticism of his plastic chair design.

2 - I have to summarize before I quote. Tom Friedman - NY Times columnist and author of The World is Flat, is talking about energy which of course must lead to petroleum. He starts with "The stone age didn't end when we ran out of stone." He is asking and looking for a solution to our energy problems and suggests: "We need 100,000 people in 100,000 garages trying 100,000 things - in the hope that five of them break through. He feels current efforts are hopeless and that it will take a top-down systems approach to fix this. And the quote I've been leading up to? "Without a systems approach, what do you end up with? Corn ethanol in Iowa."

So here you have two very different people bit who agree on at least one thing: we have energy (and food) problems and ethanol is not the way to go.

I've written before on ethanol and with as little as I know now, it does not seem to be the way we can get out of this crisis. I am happy though for gas that seems to be moving downward toward $3/gallon. If in July of 2006 when I filled up for $1.99/gallon you'd have told me 1) I'd be paying $3.35/gallon and 2) I'd be happy about it; I'd have thought you were crazy!

We have friends in Rogersville whose lives and livelihoods may be affected by the construction and operation of an Ethanol plant almost literally in their backyard. There's a major hearing on this case that is going to happen on the MSU campus in September. If I can get off work that day I'd like to sit in for personal education and to lend moral support to my friends.