loving the oil

Isn't it handy I happen to have pictures of the Board of Water and Light from last year, hehe.

This guy, J. Peter Lark, the general manager of the Board of Water & Light in Lansing, wrote an editorial about how Michigan used to be an industrial giant, the supplier of WWII machinery (whoohoo!), Detroit was considered the “Arsenal of Democracy.” The good old ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, eh? When the economy was fueled by wars and we were shooting for the moon and the stars.

He says we should sign on, like 24 other US states, and pledge to use wind power and landfill gases to generate electricity. Hey, this is the general manager of the Board of Water & Light talking! He says only 3 percent of the electricity sold in Michigan is from renewable resources. He wants to see that tripled in the next decade.

Mr. Lark is saying Michigan can be the “Arsenal of Green Energy” instead of the “Arsenal of Democracy.” I like that. Envision less dependency on foreign oil. Envision less dependency on foreign oil. Envision less dependency on foreign oil. Envision fewer reasons for you know what. Yep, "protecting our interests"/loving the oil. Oil and blood, both running, one out of, one into, the ground.

Our Michigan auto execs failed us. They decided to nix the electric car. So, we have to keep “protecting our interests” in oil. Remember what that means. (I still haven’t seen “Who Killed the Electric Car?” gotta see it.)

Don and I would buy a wind turban for the farm if we could afford it ($6,000-22,000). Maybe we’ll try to afford it in a few years. Depending on available wind, we could reduce and/or eliminate our need for electricity fueled by oil. And the process of converting methane gas from landfills around here for electricity, that doesn’t break my heart either.

But what I’m getting pretty excited about is a bio-diesel burning car. After my Chevy Aveo I’d like to get one of these. I would go around to restaurants and ask for their frying oil. Hey! Michigan being the state with the highest number of fat people, that means leftover French Fry oil is plentiful! Heather, does Chris know a lot about making biodiesel?


This site talks about biodiesel fuel processors you can buy, but it also says you can build your own if you’re handy. Hey, I’m married to a handy guy.

So here are some benefits of biodiesel according to this site:

* It can be made from almost any vegetable oil. Most restaurants will gladly give you their used oil for this, but it’s best if it hasn’t been used too many times. You can make a batch in a day (6 hours).

* It’s actually good for your car’s engine, naturally cleans it.

* Biodiesel is so pure you can drink it! “100 times more biodegradable than petro-diesel, is cleaner burning, does not contribute additional Co2 to the atmosphere when burned" (Don, science teacher explains: regular diesel is made from crude oil that contained trapped carbon for millions of years in the ground, so burning it brings new carbon into the atmosphere. But biodiesel is burning carbon that was already in our atmosphere, so plants have already recycled it and we're not putting additional carbon into the air), "less explosive and less dangerous in a spill or accident, and smells like a deep fryer when it burns instead of the nasty diesel smell.”

* You can make top quality biodiesel for $.50-.90 a gallon.

So, am I right that any diesel burning engine can take biodiesel? I read that you might have to change rubber fittings for Viton, since biodiesel erodes rubber.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe converting to these new technologies is that hard. It just takes WILL. JFK said he wanted a man on the moon in 10 years. It happened in 8. Could Al Gore (i.e., President Al Gore) do the same, different goal? Convert dependency to foreign oil to dependency on the available energy from the sun, wind and trash (including trashed oil)? OMG, can you imagine a 10 year goal like that?