Some Solutions to the Energy - Oil Crisis - 2008

When it is a matter of national security, fairly broad extensions of immediate, timely and appropriate uses of power are available.

What is more an issue of national security in a capitalistic nation than an economic foundation that is crumbling daily before us?

Exerting these powers in measured thoughtful response to this crisis is appropriate use of them and they encompass a broad spectrum.

The what to do may be in some question but the ability to do it, is not. We have paid many years of billions of dollars for the research already completed in a number of key areas, especially in alternatives for fuel and energy. These sit idling on shelves and fail to be brought into the play of our “free market” economy.

Why not bring them into play now, if indeed competition is an integral and relevant part of our economic system? We did give aid, incentives and subsidies to our oil companies that they could thrive. Why would we not do the same for these others from pond scum farming for ethanol to coal into gas / liquid fuels to the use of kudzu and chaparral oils for conversion into fuels?

Some of the options available to exercise remedy in the current marketplace, US and Global economies are:

1. Market closure
2. Price caps
3. Specific price freezes
4. Profit caps of critical commodities
5. Suspended trading on commodities and futures
6. Re-establish subsidies to market oil’s competitors in energy / fuel distribution
7. Enforce accounting practices standards
8. Enforce regulations on NYMEX and SEC standards of practice
9. Stop allowing leveraged buys in stocks, futures, commodities and speculations
10. Re-establish manufacturing grants and subsidies
11. Create stop-gap measure for trucks, shippers, air freight and fishing industries
12. Enforce fair trade regulations in profit margins of reasonable versus gouging and unreasonable
13. Have embargo on export of any and all national crude assets / gas and byproducts, and especially diesel fuel
14. Make low cost loans and grants to truckers, airlines, shippers, rail lines, and other industries affected dramatically by the high fuel costs currently impacting them
15. Stop talking about ANWR and use our Alaskan oil being sent out elsewhere to stay here in the US - we paid for it
16. Stop playing politics with our economy - the real lives it destroys will never support a government that caused or allowed it
17. Enforce sanity of accounting and true balance on our financial sector and all other corporate entities
18. Stop bailing out your friends that sit in the top one percent of the economic echelon - they are loose cannons that will serve no one but themselves in the long run and can afford to live in any other country they choose any time and for any reason.
19. Establish “easy start up” programs for businesses. Drop fees required, drop the difficulties required and reward those who will employ and profit immediately to rebuild our economic infrastructure.
20. Create a return beyond inflation to those using their funds to back these business ventures that are immediately attractive in real money rates.
21. Stop allowing countries to heavily tariff and tax our goods and services there, including the UK and the European Union.
22. Give us an office that can facilitate international sales, requirements and other necessary options that is predictably easy and straight forward to use - no more complicated than a first grader could use.
23. Force down our natural gas and electricity prices, whatever it takes (fed ceiling on or subsidies with regulated price caps). Not only did our taxpayer dollars build their facilities, power lines and maintenance of them, we need the prices brought down before Americans die as a result of the prices.
24. Do the hydrogen bull later and immediately sponsor funding for all - electric / battery power cars - let’s get them on the road - make it affordable by grant or subsidy or tax savings to own it, to buy it and get us some batteries (lithium ion, etc.) into our market, make them affordable and sponsor car companies willing to do it with incentives –> they probably have product designs on the shelf.
25. Find a low cost air travel fuel alternative to use in our planes, a cheaper alternative particularly coal to gas process or pond scum ethanol for all government vehicles / military vehicles, ships, trains, etc.
26. Make it legal to use electric cushman vehicles, off-road vehicles, golf carts and similar vehicles for trips on the sidewalk to the grocery and other less than five mile radius jaunts.
27. Make connectedness possible to cooperate within specific industries - not for monopoly but to create new structures of cross-over alternatives and their access to distribution channels
28. Get our farmers out of the “till Under” method of getting subsidies - we need the growth capacity of all of it to meet needs. Things are different now than they were forty years ago.
29. Make it impossible to add a rider to any bill that doesn’t directly pertain to it - that is costing effectiveness of our House and Senate / all governing bodies in all levels.
30. Make possible the use of emissions cutting technology to be applied in the refineries and in new refineries so we can build some new facilities up to par and clearly non-polluting.
31. Force moratorium of use of foreclosure as a process of acceptable loss against taxes required from companies and they will start working with homeowners to get their money rather than pursuing foreclosure as a method of lowering their tax liabilities.
32. The natural resources (including oil, natural gas, electricity generated by public projects and others) belong to our nation and to her people –> not to profit driven companies - ultimately that will be the deciding factor and it will become a new landscape regardless - the resources never belonged to these corporations in the first place. Not oil, minerals, water, electricity created by publicly paid projects, not any of those and others that are national resources, ever could actually be leased to anyone for profit at the expense of the American people, no matter what has been done with it up until now.
33. There are some interesting alternatives for fuel sources including carbon dioxide in solution taken from the ambient air, using the toxic components present nearly everywhere as a conversion into a fuel source, cogon grass and its oils, chaparral and its oils, kudzu and other out of hand fast growing and heavily oxygenated plant materials, early steam engine propulsion dynamics and early electric motor-driven vehicle options. There are also suggestions that at one time the Japanese had developed a water-driven engine which used water as the fuel source - quite possibly a similar design exists within the r & d of many Detroit automakers and others. Incentives could bring these and other designs out of the closets and into operations within six - nine months.
34. Establish a preliminary safety procedure that would be very inexpensive for protecting a design prior to patent application and lower patent application fees as well.
35. There can be incentives, encouragement and payments made to anyone that retrofits their existing vehicle to run on vegetable oil, or be retrofitted into a total electric configuration. Some states are using penalties, imposing fines and discouraging these changes when the exact opposite should be occurring given the current and continuing circumstances in the energy sectors.

And one other thing, along a personal note -

Everytime I hear anyone use the current situation to instigate drilling in ANWR or anywhere else (at our expense while tearing up the territory and charging us obscene prices for gasoline and diesel fuel, etc.) - the first thing I know is “HOW DARE YOU BE THAT SHITTY and GREEDY and INSENSITIVE and UNCARING and filled with CONTEMPT for the American people?” Why would you even start to consider opening your mouth and saying something like that? “Who do you think you are?” Does it occur to any of you that the damages you’ve already done - you have to fix?

How much more do you really want to have to fix BECAUSE - BY GOD - YOU’RE GOING TO BE FIXING IT!

Maybe some of the ideas listed above will inspire some other ideas or be joined together such that solutions can be enacted very quickly. Let me know, if I can be of any further help . . .

Written by Cricket Diane C “Sparky” PHillips, 2008

06-11-08

“Creating the Tangible from the Impossible every day.”

Cricket House Studios, USA1 - USAX1 - [cd]9 - USA

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