Big Oil Benefits From "Divide and Conquer"

EDITORS NOTE: This opinion piece was originally published in May 2006, after the recent push by Big Power for EV's, I began to wonder if Big Oil will be replaced by Big Power who will benefit not from the best alternative fuel but from the alternative that continues to allow them to economically control which alt fuels become ubiquitous, hey what about domestic ethanol?

Replacing all fossil based fuels with hydrogen, derived from the ecologically friendly power of water and wind is the only near term total solution to the world's energy crisis, and the elimination of green house emissions. Who says an old dog can't learn new tricks?

Opinion by Bob Gordon
President, The Auto Channel

PHOENIX, AZ - May 9, 2006: After spending time at the 2006 Clean Cities Congress here in Phoenix, and after listening to doomsday speeches, presentations, and facts and opinions promoting only partial and short term energy solutions, I came to the conclusion that the top line ANSWER to the "Energy Crisis" and its progeny the destruction of our earth’s ecology, is and has always been right here in our faces, everywhere on our beautiful fragile planet. The ingredients for the solution are abundant and here for the using and using and using...are 100% self renewing, and leave no harmful emissions behind. Best of all, no single country or group can control or monopolize this magic elixir.

The solution to this ending of “life as we know it” problem is simple and one that everyone (other than the entrenched despots; corporate, elected or appointed) will agree upon and support. The solution results from the technological transmutation of our wind and our water into Electric which we can use to convert water into Hydrogen to power our vehicles and replace oil forever. Wind and water, two of earth's most basic and inherent components, are the solution.

Now with a true concern and recognition of our problems we need to participate to form a “collective will,” and insist that those in a leadership position do everything necessary to direct industry to use its modern technologies and allow the wind and water to give us even more than they already have.

I know I am beginning to sound like a Pollyanna tree hugger, and/or a poet that is communing with nature and has "plugged into our earth". But no, I am the same old car guy who has finally recognized that a single logical, simple and realistic solution to the energy problems has been presented to us by Mother Earth herself… “Take advantage of this opportunity I am providing you with. Here are the elements that can help save you and help save me and I provide them to humankind in an everlasting supply”. Talk about manna in the desert, this sounds pretty biblical to me, and here it is 9 AM with nothing in my system but hotel courtesy coffee.

Okay, so how did this epiphany happen? Well, at the Clean Cities Congress there are lots of well meaning, concerned energy and ecological professionals who are, have, and continue to propose solutions to the energy problems here in this country and around the globe.

A recurrent theme during the presentations, meetings and coffee break discussions by alternative fuel experts and advocates was that there is not just one but many, many, many potential solutions to reduce our energy problems and help reduce the dependence on oil, suggestions and proposals included; vehicles powered by soy bean oil, biodiesel, electric, ethanol; clean diesel, natural gas, liquid petroleum gas, propane, methane, hydrogen made from natural gas, hydrogen from hydrides, hydrogen from nuclear power; hydrogen made at home in our garages, big springs, compressed air, used French fry oil, and so on. If it burns or explodes it is being proposed as a potential solution, and all have some merit, and each has its benefits, its proponents and each its detractors, and that’s the problem.

More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote in a book called “The Art of War”, that success will come from the strategy of “divide and conquer” …a strategy that is at work today in our efforts to solve our nations and the world’s Junkie Like Dependence on fossil fuels and the companies and countries that sell us the needed “smack”.

Many solutions are not the solution; each suggestion has a counter suggestion, each need for support and love (both financially and logistically) cancels out another's need for money and support. And all the while we driver drones fill up our tanks, complain about cost, stay depressed yet stick our heads in the sand so we can, like a junkie, enjoy our highs without a concern for the lows we know will soon come, the result of immature and premeditated commercial and government policies.

I believe it's time to take matters into our own hands and lobby to use what Nature has provided. Combined with our God given intelligence and survival instincts, and a lot of smart folks, we must generate a country wide and then a world wide Collective Will to ensure the adoption and implementation of what’s logical, safe and will work in all respects.

It’s time for our government and our leaders to govern and lead. Just as JFK energized this country and the world with a call to place a man on the moon, so must President Bush, and his successor, and our congress energize our citizens once again, but this time with the message and goal that a future with unlimited, non-polluting energy that is abundant, available and uncontrolled is here under our noses. If he and they follow this I can virtually guarantee that approval ratings will jump and the economy will get even better, and the democracy of cheap and plentiful hydrogen fuel will help transform those countries under the yoke of despots into the modern era. Details and ideas on how it can be done will come. I promise you that.

To that end, we must all be educated about the possibilities and benefits of this non-polluting and renewable source of energy, that everyone on earth owns and can benefit from. Hydrogen, in its iterations and applications, can power our vehicles and heat our homes, and run the machinery of modern life here on earth. And the way to get it in abundance is to borrow its power from the water we drink through the harnessing of the wind around us…what’s wrong with this scenario?

From now on The Auto Channel will be regularly adding links to information and data that supports this hypothesis. Anyone out there who thinks I’m nuts, is a victim of the depression caused by “Divide and Conquer.” It’s time to support a single realistic solution to our problems.

www.hydrogen.gov.

Discover the unique power of the wind