The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 12
For a guy who grew up primarily in Brooklyn and Queens, farming was as alien
to me as the dark side of the moon. Nevertheless, the story was riveting because it presented economic possibilities that made my head spin: replacing
foreign petroleum oil fuels with domestically produced fuels from crops...WOW!
With the 1970's oil crisis still very much on my mind (and on the minds of most
Americans), it was a thrilling discovery. But as I was busy trying to build an
advertising agency the last thing I could focus on was where to build silos in
NYC to house all the harvested crops needed to produce biofuels.
Alas, it would take two decades before I could re-examine the potential for alternative fuels again. Along the way, I co-founded The Auto Channel and
TheAutoChannel.com with Bob Gordon, and added greatly to my personal automotive experience from owning a fairly wide variety of new and classic vehicles.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks and the dramatic rise in the price of petroleum oil fuels, The Auto Channel began examining alternative fuels in greater
detail - not just Bob and I, our long-time business associate and friend Mark
Fulmer and some of our correspondents also caught the alt-fuel bug.
As I have often written in previous articles, although we were all well aware of
smog and airborne health problems, our interest in alternative fuels centered
on energy independence and the wondrous economic potential of alternative
fuels. We read more, we attended and covered as many alternative energy
events as we could, and we discussed the subject with a lot of people...lots of
people.
We were feverishly fascinated; almost like a sexual attraction. We delved into all forms of alternative energy and
fuels, including solar, wind, and even compressed
air...that's right compressed air to power a passenger vehicle (See: Zero-Emissions are Up in The Air at MDI.
Our position on "energy independence" was and is based
on two points:
1. Freeing the country from dependence and extortion
from foreign sources for engine fuels - this is sort of the
normally stated goal of energy independence.
