Two

Bobby Schneider Oil Politics Kim Fortun Annotation #2: Fuel

Since its discovery, oil has been the backbone of the American lifestyle. However, slowly this backbone is decaying and diminishing to the point where it will soon be unable to sustain the American life any longer. Clearly, the United State needs to find easy solutions which will be the most effective in the shortest time span in order to save itself from an already severe oil addiction. The 2008 documentary film, __Fuel__, directed by and starring Josh Tickell, helps America to find the easy solutions it needs by simply utilizing what it already has; that is, what is already in existence. This is directly related to the central argument of the film: There are currently ways to replace oil with more sustainable, cheap, and domestic resources and it is about time that America takes them for a long-term test run.

As seen in any story involving a resource as important as oil, there is a wide variety of stakeholders and social actors who are dependent on its continuous supply. Although the primary purpose of this movie is to show people the problems oil causes and the solutions that can help fix the problems, there is a brief description about just how dependent we are on oil. The narrator, Josh Tickell, explains that “it [oil] heats us, it cools us, it feeds us, it brings us what we need to live, [and] it takes us where we need to go.” As these words are being said, images are portrayed that allow viewers to realize just how much oil is used in their everyday lives. Heating oil, car fuel, jet fuel, lights, roadways, and buildings are just a handful of items that rely heavily on an oil market. If all of these objects need oil and mankind uses all of these items nearly every day, then it would make sense to say that mankind is also an incredible social factor in the world of oil.

As stated within the first few minutes of the film, roughly one hundred and fifty years ago people first drilled into the Earth and discovered oil which immediately took the world by storm, becoming “the lifeblood of our society.” This quote is accompanied by a brief clip of oil being injected into a human arm. As it fills the arm, the message becomes clear: oil is in our veins, it is who we are, and we need it to survive. Some products that rely on oil more indirectly than fuel for cars or heating purposes include plastics, ammonia, chlorine, fertilizers, and PVC’s. At one point in the film it is revealed that the State of Louisiana has one hundred and fifty petrochemical facilities in an area of only one hundred miles to produce products such as gasoline, road oil, diesel fuel, kerosene, and engine oil. . . talk about dependence. America, which only produces about 2% of the world’s oil supply, consumes nearly 40% of it, proving that the American lifestyle truly does rely on oil, much more than any nation should. Without this black gold modern life as we know it would not exist, but maybe that, as this film explains, is not such a bad thing.

Oil, by far, contributes to more life problems than it does solutions. It is for this reason that America’s heavy dependence on the resource is a major concern. Josh opens with a story about his high school science project in which he tested the local waters because it upset him that signs warned him against swimming and fishing. His findings were shocking: Mercury and Lead were found within the sample. After the project went to the state level, a judge who was a member of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that his tests were invalid and made the water seem worse than the EPA’s test have concluded. Sadly, he later discovered that the EPA of Louisiana receives 90% of its funds from oil company permits. This may lead many to ask: If the EPA is getting money from oil companies, why on Earth would the organization come out and tell everyone the truth about how awful oil really is? Well, that is just it. . . they do not; they lie in order to protect their sources of funding. Unfortunately, this means that Louisiana oil companies can continue pouring waste products into the water and there will be no one around to stop them. Sadly, the lying does not stop there either. When the CEO’s of big oil industries were being questioned about previous secret meetings by the United States Senate, the Republican majority, and specifically Chairman Ted Stevens, disallowed the swearing in of the men in order to prevent them from speaking under oath and therefore, being allowed to lie. Another story brought up was the September eleventh terrorist attacks. As we all know, America relies on fuel, some of which comes from the world’s largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and it just so happens that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Josh asks, “Did our choice of oil lead to this?” It just may be that America is funding attacks against itself simply by purchasing oil from foreign nations. Although some oil is made in the United States, the waste products of the process cause extensive environmental damage. According to Josh there are only three ways to remove these waste products: water, land, and burning, thus creating a “toxic cesspool.” This tainting of the surrounding swamps and waters led to the contamination of fish, in turn affecting people when they ate these fish. One particular water supply has a sign that reads: “No swimming or fishing, water unit for human consumption.” The lower half of the sign was rusted away and the water was clearly polluted, yet rather than fixing this they left the local population to deal with the mess for themselves. As a local woman mentioned, all the companies seem to think is “if they die, so what?” Research has also found that these unmentioned pollutants in Louisiana led to increases in birth defects, fertility problems, reproductive problems such as miscarriages (Josh’s mother had nine), and the most cancer incidents in the country. Students who take buses to school are also at risk after a study showed that the interior of buses have four times more exhaust fumes than outside which can lead to cancers, asthma, and early deaths. “Factor that into the cost of gasoline,” said Tickell. “Make the companies pay for that [loss of life], see how much a gallon of fuel costs.” As if the local Louisiana devastation was not enough, nearly 80% of carbon dioxide that contributes to Global Warming is related to oil production. Furthermore, despite the fact that the American population is only 4.5% of the world population we contribute half of the global automobile carbon dioxide emissions because our cars are, on average, 30% larger than cars in other countries. The reason for this is because the government offers subsidies and tax returns to Americans with big cars weighing more than six thousand pounds. With everyone falling ill and developing diseases from the oil and its side effects, it makes sense that many people will need medical assistance and healthcare. Unfortunately, there is no money for healthcare because all of it is being used to purchase the oil that is making people sick in the first place. The United States spends fifty billion dollars every year for the sole purpose of having military forces in the Middle East to maintain the flow of oil to our country. Why are we wasting so much money on one objective, when we could spend far less than that amount on a completely revised lifestyle?

A life of oil is a life of ultimate failure. Luckily, we still have a chance at saving ourselves from an uncertain doom. Throughout the film, glimpses of a world without oil dependence can be observed and it looks like a world that many would appreciate. As explained by Tickell, Henry Ford’s cars were created with engines that could successfully run on biodiesels, such as ethanol (made from the distillation and fermentation of corn). If biodiesel is such a great energy source why did the government pass a bill which prevented it from being sold? Germany clearly did not have the same train of thought as the United States because today Germans have the opportunity to drive biodiesel cars which can reach speeds of more than one hundred and fifty miles per hour. During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, America’s energy use was downsized by 25% thanks to the efforts he made to make the country more energy efficient. As a bonus, he even installed solar panels on the White House roof. In 2020, Stockholm, Sweden, is expecting to be fully running on renewable energies, thus being able to call itself “a green people.” These ideas of being environmentally friendly and sustainable led to the big project in this movie, the veggie van. I was impressed by how mixing water, lye, and used vegetable oils (grease) from restaurants and fast food chains could create biodiesel. Everyone who saw the van loved it and within a short amount of time it was the talk of America as people gradually became interested in biofuels. Even Willie Nelson became involved in spreading the word on biofuel and sang songs about biodiesel at a Texas gas station, which convinced that station to nickname the product it sold “bioWillie.” These events, which either have already or are currently taking place, have not only brought people together to meet a common goal but it seemed that people were happier and generally had more optimistic outlooks on life during the times of these energy-efficient and eco-friendly ways of living. Now the question that remains is why then are we, as Americans, not acting more heavily on these energy impulses to make the country healthier, environmentally safe, and simply better? Believe it or not, there are many ways to make this concept a reality that can be achieved within the next few years.

This film was full of interesting ideas and techniques to make the world a more environmentally-friendly place to live, but there were also some moments that surprised me. Overall, the Veggie Van and the trip Josh Tickell made across America got my attention the most. For someone to make something as simple as a biofuel van become so well-known and to influence so many people shows me that this is a person who deserves a lot of credit and has earned my respect. I think that what he is doing is great and although, as he explained when his work in the United States backfired, there will be some setbacks and failures, his efforts are not going unnoticed by everyone and in the end it will, hopefully, pay off. I also enjoyed leaning about the ways in which algae can be utilized to create biofuel in such a short amount of time, as well as at a much cheaper cost than what we currently must pay for oil. If plants and animals could live in a world without oil for millions of years, then why can’t humans too? Though yes mankind needs some source of energy in order to commute, communicate, and live, there are so many alternatives to oil that are already available for use and all we have to do is start taking advantage of them; is that so hard?

Though the movie was quite interesting throughout its extent, there were some downsides. For me in particular, the most disturbing pieces of information I learned were those about the Environmental Protection agency and the unfair Senate meeting. Of all the people who would lie about the state of our environment, the last group that should be, and that I thought would be, was the EPA. It disgusts me to think that this type of “good-doer” organization still puts money before both health and safety. Rather than lying for oil companies to maintain their funding, why not move away from them and search for new donations from more environmentally-aware and trustworthy sources? As far as the Republicans and Ted Stevens are concerned, they have only helped to further my hatred for politics as a whole. For these people to sit back and let other innocent victims die as a result of oil productions that they support (and possibly have paychecks relying on) is simply upsetting and shows an incredible lack of character, leadership, sympathy, responsibility, humanity, and so much more. Having people avoid something as sacred as a legal oath is morally wrong and just goes to show how ignorant and corrupt our government has been, is, and, unless we as a people change it, will always be.

Does America need a strong supply of energy resources? Yes. Does that mean that this energy must derive from oil? Not in the least. This film supplies an ample amount of corrective action that can be performed in order to make the world a better, safer, and less oily place to live. The biggest idea encouraged in this film was the use of biodiesel. Claims were made in magazines that biodiesel was causing America’s children to starve and was considered “a crime against humanity,” yet this is not the case. As it is, America overproduces food by 30% and sells this surplus to countries in Africa, as well as people in Mexico. If people stick with using oil, when the oil price rise, so do food prices in order to compensate for the money lost to fuel. When the price of food rises, the people in these other countries can no longer afford the food so either way (oil or biofuel) America would theoretically lose. If both fuels have negative side effects, but biofuel is healthier and so many of today’s cars are equipped with diesel engines that can run on biodiesel without the slightest modifications, why are we even still considering the switch? Along with these biodiesel engines, people should begin using electric or hybrid cars and the government should be subsidizing smaller cars, such as the Toyota Prius, rather than large gas-guzzling cars because the truth is evident: the current plan is not helping the economy or the environment in any way. A project with immense potential is algae-based biodiesel, which uses the oil produced from algae to make a form of oil that can still be used to run engines and make plastics. Rather than spending three hundred million dollars per day on the war in Iraq, America could spend just twenty-five million dollars for the next twenty years. The reason for this is because algae reproduces within hours, making it possible for a small plate of algae to fill an industrial holding chamber in just a few days: a one hundred and fifty million year process reduced to merely three days. . . not half bad. In addition, it would only take roughly seventeen hundred algae farms (which simply attach on to currently existing power plants) to meet the fuel needs of 25% of the nation. Another efficient idea was the introduction of Megaflora trees, which are fully mature in three years and can re-grow from their own roots in another three years once cut down. By planting trees on the rooftops in major cities not only would the air quality be better but we could also grow food on roofs. In fact, constructing just one thirty-story vertical farm that produces water, food, and energy in New York City could feed the mouths of fifty thousand people. Josh Tickell concludes his documentary with these words:

“The Earth is not a thing. It’s not a rock. It’s a   living being and we are part of that. If we begin to learn to live by the principles set forth in nature, we have infinite abundance of energy, infinite abundance of resources. We can sustain every living human being, as well as the human beings that will come. The choice is ours, every single one of ours. The rest of the journey is up to you.”

This film has inclined me to look further into the algae farms and also research if there are any significant downsides to the use of biofuels. An article in Oilgae, entitled “Biodiesel from Algae,” describes both the benefits of algae as well as the process by which the biodiesel will be made. The opening paragraph lays out the definition of biodiesel, that being “any diesel-equivalent biofuel made from renewable biological materials such as vegetable oils or animal fats consisting of long-chain saturated hydrocarbons” (pg. 1). Unfortunately, due to the vast quantities of vegetables needed to make the fuel, as well as complaints about food shortages, using America’s crops does not seem like the way to go. However, it just so happens that utilizing algae to make biodiesel would result in roughly “30 times more energy per acre than land crops such as soybeans. . . up to 15000 gallons per acre” (pg. 1). The oil extracted from this algae, known as green crude, undergoes transesterification, where the oil is combined with an alcohol and a catalyst to create the usable biofuel (pg. 2). Although it produces low amounts of oil, it grows and reproduces incredibly fast and therefore should be heavily considered for use in America, especially when factoring in the benefits that green crude has over its competitors. Not only could algae possibly provide this country with 10,000 gallons of green oil annually, per hectare, but could also be producing up to 50 tons of fuel, also per hectare, as opposed to jatropha, which creates a mere 2 tons (pg. 2). Furthermore, as if having a more eco-friendly fuel were not good enough, the left over residual micro algae removed from the oil during extraction can be used for animal feed or have the proteins extracted for use in human food (pg. 2). No matter what viewpoint is taken on the matter of going green, it is a necessity and it is better to make changes now than to suffer from lack of change at a later point in time. Experimentation is needed to discover which energy alternatives will not only be the most effective, but also the fastest to develop and the least expensive, so why not just take the chance and see if algal oil is the answer to our energy problems?

A 2008 National Geographic article, by Mason Inman, displays the headline “Clearing Land for Biofuels Makes Global Warming Worse.” It just may be that the great, natural solution to our energy needs might not be so great after all. The point made at the opening of this document serves as a key argument to the problems associated with biofuels. “When farmers clear native ecosystems such as forests or grasslands to grow crops, this gives off substantial amounts of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas that fuels climate change” and before the biofuel can reduce the effects of carbon, it must first erase it’s “carbon debt” (pg. 1). This debt means that the crops must first offset the amount of carbon that was released from machines while preparing the land to grow the biodiesel plants on, as well as the carbon that is set free from beneath the soil. In the rainforest specifically there are problems with excessive carbon dioxide emissions because not only is deforestation occurring, but there is also carbon gas hiding within the decomposed plant product on the ground, known better as peat (pg. 1). David Tilman, from the University of Michigan, stated that “I don’t think we can afford to make biofuels if we have to wait 50 years for any benefit” especially since ethanol, the type of crop that would more than likely be America’s choice of fuel, would take nearly a century to erase the carbon debt (pg. 1). However this number is not nearly as bad as the clearing of “peatland rain forests”, which take 423 years to offset the carbon debt (pg. 2). Despite the fact that this process clearly produces more carbon emissions than it could efficiently make up for, and because nearly twice as much farmland will have to be established to successfully supply both fuel and food to the world, governments appreciate biofuels because, currently, they are less expensive than oil. Though the world at one point had high hopes for a future of biofuel from corn and other farmland crops, it may just be the case that a different form of biofuel, such as natural prairie grass, forest waste, or algae may be better suited to provide our energy in the years to come (pg. 2).

“The American economy lives and dies on oil. The global economy lives and dies on oil.” Soon however, the American and global economies will forfeit the life aspect of this quote and simply die on, or should I say die from, oil. Somewhere along the line something went wrong and organizations and governments made the decision that money and short-term happiness were more important than health, long-term happiness, and life. As a result of this ignorance it is up to the rest of the world to take a stance for environmentally friendly changes and Americans must assert their right as members of a democracy to demand understanding and obedience from the government. As Gandhi once said, “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.” We must stop dwelling on the ideas and lifestyles of the past, stop wasting time doing nothing, and start making a difference today.

Works Cited

Inman, Mason. “Clearing Land for Biofuels Makes Global Warming Worse.” __National__ __Geographic__. 7 Feb. 2008. < [] >.

Tickell, Joshua. __Fuel__. Perf. Joshua Tickell, Barbara Boxer, Richard Branson. Blue Water Entertainment, Green Planet Productions, and Open Pictures, 2008.

“Biodiesel from Algae.” __Oilgae__. < [] >.