from
their blog
“Why
Gal Luft is the most hated man in Riyadh, Detroit, and Des Moines”
comment by
Jerry Gordon
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My
colleague in Toronto, Israpundit
editor Ted Belman sent us this Esquire
on-line piece on former Israeli Lt. Col. and counter terrorism expert
Gal Luft’s four suggestions for solving the energy crisis, now that
we are closing on the historic inflation-adjusted price of $102 a
barrel last seen circa 1980.
While I don’t agree
with most of Luft’s ‘green solutions’, the ones I like most are
banning gasoline-powered vehicles and beating up on the Iowa Corn
lobby about stopping egregious taxpayer subsidies of net negative
energy consuming ethanol production by canceling the Iowa caucuses!
The later one would save tens of millions of media buys for cable TV
ads and our sanity in the political campaigning feeding frenzy nearly
upon us.
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Here is Luft’s
bottom line:
“These are only
four of many common-sense opportunities throughout the economy, but
we’re not taking advantage of them, because there isn’t a
sustainable market for alternative fuels. Yet. Which brings us back
to step one: flex-fuel technology. Get that and the other three will
take care of themselves. There will be stiff opposition from the
oil, corn, and auto lobbies. There always is. But let’s hope that
Washington can step up for a change. Because once you take politics
out of the energy policy, you get very different — and much better
— results.”
Read Luft’s ideas,
they are thought provoking and, at the least entertaining, especially
the graphics.
Four Ways to Solve
the Energy Crisis
By Tim Heffernan, Esquire on-line, November 20, 2007
You hear it all the
time: We’ve got to reduce our dependence on foreign oil; it’s a
matter of homeland security. Fine. Nobody’s arguing. But the
solutions that get offered — drilling in ANWR, mandating better
automobile fuel efficiency, pushing ethanol — don’t really solve
anything. They’re politically impossible, or too expensive, or
contrary to free-market forces. They’re losers.
Energy-independence
advocate Gal Luft looks for winners. The former lieutenant colonel in
the Israel Defense Forces and counter terrorism expert fervently
believes that the only way to make America safe is to make it energy
independent. And so as executive director of the Institute for the
Analysis of Global Security and cofounder of the Set America Free
Coalition, he has set out to do just that.
Luft advises Congress
and security companies. He briefs industrial and environmental groups.
Yet what separates him from other energy specialists are his pragmatic
solutions. He doesn’t peddle pie-in-the-sky political strategies.
He’s a realist. He has a single goal: freeing America from the grip
of foreign oil. And he wants to do it now. At right are four steps he
says we can — and should — take today.
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1.
Make gasoline-only cars illegal “Every gas-powered
car has an average street life of seventeen years, which means that
the minute you leave the lot, you’re signing up for two decades of
foreign-oil dependence. The easiest way to change this is to mandate
that every vehicle sold in the U. S. is flex-fuel compatible so that
it can run on just about any blend of hydrocarbon-based fuels —
gasoline, ethanol, methanol, etc. The technology already exists, and
the process is cheap, about a hundred dollars per vehicle. Detroit
will cry about ‘government interference,’ but in fact the mandate
would open a vast new free market in alternative-fuel development.”
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2.
Kill the Iowa caucuses “Here’s the first
thing every presidential candidate who visits Iowa is asked: ‘Where
do you stand on ethanol?’ Why’s this a problem? Because the
ethanol lobby has managed to place huge tariffs on ethanol produced
abroad while freezing out the development of other alternative fuels
at home. It portrays itself as this sort of savior, the domestic
solution to our reliance on foreign oil, but it really just protects a
tiny number of midwestern corn farmers. Anyone who thinks otherwise,
bear in mind: Even if every single kernel of corn grown in America
were converted to ethanol, it would still only replace about 12
percent of America’s gasoline requirement.”
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3.
Think of the world in terms of sugarcane “America hasn’t
been very good about making friends in the Middle East lately, but
there are still a few countries in Latin America, Africa, and
southeast Asia that like us. And many of them, such as Panama, Kenya,
and Thailand, grow sugarcane, from which you can make ethanol at half
the cost of making it from corn. We should direct foreign aide
throughout the agricultural sector in these countries to increase
their efficiency and create jobs. That will make them happy, and
it’ll improve our national security. They’ll be our friends
forever. Unlike the OPEC nations.”
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4.
Revolutionize waste “Sixty-five percent
of our garbage is biomass: food, paper, scrap wood. All of it could be
converted to methanol. The process has been around for two hundred
years. And it’s twice as efficient as cellulosic ethanol, supposedly
the next big thing in alternative fuels. Then there’s coal —
America has a quarter of the world’s reserve, but we use it mainly
to feed power plants, which is a dirty and inefficient use. Instead,
coal can be converted to clean-burning methanol for the equivalent of
one dollar per gallon. Last, look to recyclables, like black liquor, a
toxic by-product of the paper industry. Right now, paper mills
inefficiently recycle it themselves. But black liquor can be converted
to methanol. Do so and we’d generate nine billion gallons of
methanol a year — almost twice the ethanol we now make from corn.”
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Actually getting this
done
“These are only
four of many common-sense opportunities throughout the economy, but
we’re not taking advantage of them, because there isn’t a
sustainable market for alternative fuels. Yet. Which brings us back
to step one: flex-fuel technology. Get that and the other three will
take care of themselves. There will be stiff opposition from the
oil, corn, and auto lobbies. There always is. But let’s hope that
Washington can step up for a change. Because once you take politics
out of the energy policy, you get very different — and much better
— results."
November 24th, 2007
at 9:02 • opinion
• Gal
Luft • four
energy crisis solutions • esquire
on-line • 0
Comments •
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