The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 511
An interesting side-note to the general understanding of how we are enslaved by, and chained to, a
dependence on fossil fuels is that coal mining in the
early days of the industrial revolution was literally legal slavery.
Furthermore, if you want to actually credit anything
with the success of the steam engine to break the
back of mankind's inescapable drudgery, the credit
should go to water, not coal or wood or natural gas
or any petroleum-based liquid. Without water there
is no steam to power the engines. Moreover, without
water there is no life, period! The mere burning of
wood or coal or natural gas or oil-based liquid is incapable of powering any device.
Moving forward - technologically - to internal combustion engines, coal is irrelevant, gasoline is irrelevant, and petroleum diesel fuel is irrelevant. As I've said
before, these fuels did not make the invention of the internal combustion engine
possible. Samuel Morey, Nicholas Otto, Karl Benz, and Henry Ford never said
to themselves, "Oh good, now that there's gasoline and diesel fuel I can invent
the car."
Once again, internal combustion engines weren't invented as a result of the
availability of gasoline and diesel fuel - and neither one of these fuels is needed.
It simply happened that through a series of political events and circumstances,
that petroleum oil fuels gained a foothold in the market. Then, via political corruption and tutelage, the oil industry bought its position as the dominant engine
fuels; bringing with it wars, disease, and environmental disasters. On page 71
of his book, Alex references the dominance of petroleum oil fuels as THE transportation fuel, but he never explains how the oil industry bought that position,
he only dances around the (wrong) notion that gasoline and petroleum diesel
earned the position because they are superior to other engine fuels.
In Alex's book, he errs again and again in lauding fossil fuels for the societal
benefits of the devices that use these fuels; devices that could be better powered by non-fossil fuels. And by "better" I mean safer, cleaner, cheaper, healthier, and with increased performance. He does this so often that I might be able
to go page by page through the entire book to find at least one on each page.
Here are a few other examples: On page 13, Alex writes:
