By Morris Malakoff, JTNews Correspondent
According to Robert Zubrin, with every drop of gasoline pumped into the car of an American motorist, that consumer is unwittingly funding the gun or bomb of a terrorist. That same motorist then compounds other global issues, such as environmental damage, while driving away from the pump, his wallet lightened in a mass looting that has been underway since the 1970s.
But Zubrin, president of Pioneer Astronautics and an engineer by trade, thinks he has a short-term solution that will free the industrialized western world from the grip of Arabs sitting on massive oil reserves. His proposal would be low-cost and would not require a massive retooling of automobile manufacturing plants.
Zubrin is not promoting expensive hybrid cars or futuristic electric or hydrogen-powered cars. What he proposes instead is that the federal government, through an immediate mandate, require that all new cars sold in this country be able to run on a combination of gasoline and alcohol-type fuels mixed in any ratio. His plan is not theoretical. The cars are called “flex-fuel” vehicles and in fact are available from some U.S. manufacturers already.
“One country has left the oil trade behind and no longer imports oil at any price,” Zubrin said at a Dec. 4 talk at Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation on Mercer Island. “That nation is Brazil.”
Zubrin made his presentation at the congregation in support of his latest book, Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil.
In Brazil, absorbing the rising cost of energy began with the 1973 oil embargo, which took a large toll on the relatively small economy. The military junta ruling the country at that time began a program of mixing alcohols into fuel. It then took a generation to see total implementation of the idea of a nearly non-petroleum-based fleet of cars and trucks as pumps, distilleries and the cars themselves became commonplace.
Zubrin recognizes that there is a “chicken and egg” issue of no one buying cars for which there is limited fuel available, e.g. few gasohol pumps in place. The proposed mandate is meant to speed the process.
“If everyone had to buy cars that were made to run on cheaper alcohol-based fuels, then the market would force pumps into place immediately,” he said. Currently, nearly 5 million such vehicles are on U.S. roads, but they generally run on standard-grade gasoline, as fewer than 1,500 pumps sell fuel that is 85 percent ethanol, mostly in the corn-laden Midwest.
As for Detroit and other automobile manufacturers gearing up for the change, Zubrin pointed to the two dozen models equipped for mixed fuels currently available in the U.S., and to the fact that all manufacturers are in the Brazilian market now.
“To make a car run on mixed fuels takes little more than making changes in the computer system that is in the car,” he said. He also points out that the cost difference when compared to a standard gasoline-only engine is negligible, whereas a currently available hybrid car can cost thousands of dollars more than its all-gasoline counterpart.
Zubrin noted that with fuels manufactured from plants such as corn, sugar or soybeans — crops the U.S. has more of than almost any country on earth — the world fuel markets would shift from the sands of Saudi Arabia to the verdant fields of North America and the cane plantations of the Caribbean and South America, cutting off the flow of $400 billion a year to the Saudis and their client terrorist organizations.
While his plan seems straightforward, and, minus the likely fierce political pushback from the oil industry and the Saudi government on Capitol Hill, it is not without critics. Zubrin himself points out that those he terms “libertarian types” are opposed to mandates of any type coming from the government. That and an affinity to the oil industry have presented him with a continual roadblock at the White House, where he has made his presentation to a number of policy advisors to the current administration.
Yet the president has expressed support for the flex-fuel option, particularly in visits to farm states. But without a large distilling or delivery infrastructure, the current and growing selections of flex-fuel vehicles are being assailed as little more than window dressing for the auto manufacturers to duck the government mandated mileage standards.
But resistance to a plan such as Zubrin’s also comes from the environmental community.
Groups such as the Sierra Club point to the fact that when fleet mileage standards are calculated, there is a credit for flex-fuel vehicles that comes about because the equation is that these cars would use the mixture half the time. In a country where there is limited access to the fuel, that is seen as nothing more than a loophole that allows for a false calculation and actually worsens the ongoing consumption of imported oil.
Dan Becker, who serves as the in-house expert on clean cars for the organization, finds the mixed fuel solution to be a non-solution on two counts.
First, he sees an economic problem.
“It costs anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 to put an ethanol pump in. The oil companies don’t have any interest in doing that. And most of the station owners don’t either,” said Becker. “The reality today is that there are places where you would have to drive a thousand miles to find the nearest ethanol station. And, even in places where there are more ethanol stations, like Minnesota and Wisconsin, most folks don’t bring their FFV to the ethanol pump,” he said in an interview posted on the Sierra Club Web site.
In the same interview, he also pointed to an environmental issue that would come with replacing petroleum with plant-generated fuels.
“You may be using more pesticides and water to produce your crop,” he said. “You may be displacing food production. You might end up importing feedstock from tropical countries where they’re already growing biofuel crops, but where any further increase will damage the rainforest. This is already happening in countries like Indonesia and Brazil. In Indonesia they’re planning to cut a thousand-mile swath of rainforest to plant biofuel plantations for the Chinese automotive market. And if we become dependent upon ethanol in this country, it’s likely that the rainforests could pay some of the price.”