After reading the following, let me know what you think, tom@mbsre.com

I heard David Blume on an AM radio show called "Coast To Coast AM" with George Noory and for three hours he had my attention. Basically David lays out a plan with the ways and means to make fuel for as little as 30 cents a gallon from stuff that we throw in the trash! Just like this last tomato crisis with salmonella where they threw away all the tomatoes, we could have made fuel from those tomatoes to use in our cars.

I guess the key part of the show that really got my attention was when David laid out the economic impact of using US Farmer grown and made alcohol. Instead of paying money to a nation that does not have our best interest in mind. We can pay US Farmers that are already getting paid NOT TO GROW corn or soybeans to grow crops to make fuel. Then our fuel money can stay in the country and boost our economy instead of transferring our wealth offshore.

Farmers can grow a diversity of crops, not just corn or soybeans, to make alcohol. Corn will yield about 250 gallons of alcohol per acre but sugar beets can yield 1000-1200 gallons an acre and the mash that is left over from making alcohol can be used as feed for livestock, fish, even human consumption or fertilizer for new crops! Nothing is wasted!

I did not realize that the first internal combustion engines DID NOT use gasoline; they ran on alcohol. Alcohol has 105 octane instead of the 87 in gas and alcohol does NOT gunk up your engine!! Dave put a million miles on his pickup running on alcohol and they took apart the engine and could see 40% to 60% of the original tool marks on the cylinder walls from when it was machined at the factory! Alcohol does NOT have carbon and carbon is what gunks up and wears out our automotive engines. Because it is a clean burning fuel you can save thousands of dollars on costly engine repair! Then we can get back to running our engines as Henry Ford and intended them to run, on alcohol.

Alcohol Can Be A Gas
By Dave Blume, published by the
International Institute for Ecological Agriculture, 2007, 630 pages, $59 hardcover.

In the foreword written for this book in 1983, when the project was first started, R. Buckminster Fuller writes that it is possible to harvest enough energy to sustainably meet humanity's needs through solar sources while completely phasing out all fossil fuels and atomic energy. Many know Bucky Fuller for his work on geodesic domes. Few are aware that he was also in charge of alternative energy research for the U.S. military during WWII, and held ethanol fuel in great esteem. The author was inspired and mentored by Fuller in the 1980's, and it could be said that this book is the culmination of Fuller's work in this field.

The intent of the 600+ pages of Alcohol Can Be a Gas is to act as a complete tool kit to revolutionize our transportation fuel system, from the grassroots up. It combines sweeping vision with intricate ecological and mechanical detail, starting with a thorough history of the use of alcohol as a fuel for internal combustion engines.

The Model T car was designed as a flex-fuel vehicle, and got 34 MPG on alcohol until prohibition put an end to small-scale ethanol production. "There's a lot that goes on in the world of energy that you never see on the 11 o'clock news" writes the author. "The control of a country's energy is the ultimate control of its people."

Blume has seen his share of the dark underbelly of the big energy conglomerates in his 25+ years working in this field, and carries the scars to prove it. There are six big sections to this tome, each of which could be a book in its own right, comprising 29 chapters. Section I gives the sweeping vision of ethanol set within the context of an ecologically renewed agriculture. The great promise of alternative energy development under President Carter during the first energy crisis is summarized, and what the author dubs 'MegaOilron's' success at squashing it.

Blume dives quickly into the controversies swirling around ethanol as a fuel with a chapter entitled 'Busting The Myths.' These myths include: 'Ethanol's net energy is negative' (studies from Brazil show ethanol has a positive net energy ratio of 9.0 when using sugarcane); 'There isn't enough land to grow the crops for ethanol' (highway medians could grow enough ethanol crops to supply 40% of America's gasoline); Ethanol is an ecological nightmare' (a permaculture ethanol system vastly improves soil fertility); 'It's food vs. fuel' (cattails grown in wastewater show tremendous promise); and 'Ethanol fuel does not address global warming' (the growing of plants, especially if organic, ties up much more CO2 than goes into the ethanol).

Part of the beauty of this book is its ecological sensibility. Blume is an organic farmer and brings 20+ years of bioregional wisdom to his writing. Two chapters contrast the nightmare of America continuing on its present energy course vs. retooling the way we do agriculture and energy along the regenerative principles of Permaculture design. There are sidebars on the restoration of degraded prairie farmland using highly complex fuel crop polycultures, and the practice of swale contour farming to replenish groundwater and topsoil.

His vision for a grassroots ethanol revolution is ambitious but conceivable: "A nationwide switch to organic farming is in order, but it can't work if we maintain a monoculture-based system, with its present emphasis on corn farming."

The second big section of Alcohol Can Be a Gas has five chapters laying out the How To's of alcohol production for fuel, including chapters on feedstocks (everything from algae to buffalo gourd), fermentation technology, distillation, and plant design.

Section III deals with saleable or otherwise useful 'co-products' from alcohol production -- from livestock and aquaculture feeds to yeast, methane, protein and propagation material for mushroom production. Sections IV, V & VI address the mechanics, regulations and subsidies for using alcohol in engines: "We can put 85% alcohol in our cars now! Really!"

Included are chapters on the business of alcohol, its economic, regulatory and legal considerations and a practical vision of small-scale production that Blume dubs "Community Supported Energy." Six case studies depict the type of grassroots on-farm ethanol production the author envisions in his revolution.

Alcohol Can Be a Gas is tailor written for people who want to put their shoulders to the millstone and do something. Despite its focus on ethanol as The solution to our looming energy crises, this book has the feel of a resource one does not want to be without -- the depth of a Whole Earth Catalog hybridized with the humor of a Humanure Handbook.

Those people working on biofuel development would be well advised to study the history of ethanol cooperatives described in this book -- honesty, integrity and setting a high ethical standard seem to be crucial to success.

I hope you will order your copy of "Alcohol Can Be A Gas"!

Click Here to get your copy

You can even turn the waste in your septic tank into fuel for your car!

Thanks, Tom Stepanski Jr.

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