Changing Your Fuel, Changing the Law.

America was known internationally for its values and moral order for the better part of the last century.  Throughout the world, you can find streets named after our presidents – such as Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy.  This level of respect was built upon the tremendous amount of work our politicians put into setting a great example and achieving not just great things for our country, but creating great, and positive change throughout the world.

In the beginning of the 2000’s this changed.  Through monumental arrogance and incompetence, the American appetite became huge. We began to consume more than our Earth and her citizens could handle.  This change in the world view of America was mainly due to our addiction to oil and our violent means of obtaining it.  Some might call this Imperialism.  Others call it war.

The American economy might currently live and die on oil, but when oil runs out, which it will, we need to have in place economical and environmentally sound replacements for our fuel and electricity.  The good news is we have those substitutions – and we have been sitting on them for several decades.

Rudolf Diesel, born in Paris in 1858, grew up taking an interest in mechanics and machinery. He made it his goal to become the greatest engineer in the world. Determined to make a more efficient engine, in 1897 he operated the first successful diesel engine – which happened to run on vegetable oil.  Diesel firmly believed in the future of biomass and wanted to give farmers and the common working person the opportunity to grown their own fuel.

In 1900, Rudolf Diesel demonstrated his engine at the World Exhibition in Paris – and took the top prize. The diesel engine began to take off. Diesel became a millionaire many times over by the age of 40.

Later, after Diesels’ death  in 1913 (his body vanishing overnight on a boat bound for England), Standard Oil created a dirty by-product of gasoline production.  They called it “diesel fuel.”

Across the pond in America: Henry Ford, the visionary behind the American automotive industry, believed, like Diesel, that by making a car that ran on a renewable resource like ethanol alcohol he could take the power out of large oil companies and place that power back into the hands of working class citizens.  By 1918 half of all cars in the United States were his Model T’s and all of them had the capacity to be run on ethanol alcohol.  In 1920 Carl Rockafeller, the founder of Standard Oil, introduced a bill that would be quickly enacted into law.  This new law became known as Prohibition.  This law banned the sale, manufacture and consumption of all forms of alcohol – including ethanol alcohol.

For 12 of the 13 years of Prohibition, Ford continued to make Model T’s that could run on ethanol alcohol in protest of Prohibition.  Then he gave up.

One year later, Prohibition was lifted.

While these two visionaries of the engine and the automotive industry were silenced, the American people don’t have to admit defeat.  The American automotive industry resisted putting seat belts in cars until legislation was put in place forcing them to do so.  This legislation came about because the American people demanded it, both by purchasing cars which had seat belts in them and by writing their Congress.

We can do the same today with clean fuels – by purchasing biodiesel and calling on Congress to subsidize both biodiesel and environmentally friendly cars.  If America put the time into making environmentally friendly cars, much like Toyota did when they began creating the Prius, we could meet popular demand for environmentally friendly cars and in turn put Detroit back to work. Biodiesel can be made from vegetable oil including sunflower and soybean oil.  Guess what other kind of oil can be used to make biodiesel?  Hemp oil.

If we were to create biodiesel using hemp, we can also use that hemp for the manufacture of environmentally friendly and sustainable items such as paper, as well as a clean burning and renewable fuel.

Here is another reason why biodiesel is so necessary: diesel engines are here to stay.  Large trucks, boats and the like won’t be able to run on electricity because they need too much power.  Biodiesel can be run in all of those diesel engines today – without any modifications!  Just as we can start using biodiesel in our cars we can start pouring biodiesel into our 16 wheeler trucks right now, without having to modify any of the trucks’ engine parts.  The change to biodiesel is effortless, practical and more cost effective than trying to change all our engines to hybrids.

The passage of hemp legalization is paramount in saving us from the coming oil crisis.  Oil will run out.  We cannot drill our way out of the end of the oil age.  In order to avert a major economic collapse we need to begin developing and investing in renewable fuels.  Biodiesel and wind powered companies are available and by choosing to purchase our energy from these companies we are making a statement to the government.  That statement, in conjunction with contacting our Congress people and demanding renewable energy and the subsidizing of environmentally friendly cars, paired  with the legalization of hemp as a renewable resource to save this planet – will be keys to the future, and saving human kind from its own problems.

First you change your fuels, then we change the law.

 

 

-Meighan Doherty, Capitol Hill Coordinator for Sensible Washington, Hempfest Volunteer and long-time activist.