David Blume's newly released "Alcohol Can Be a Gas" reveals a little known side of the ethanol debate.
David Blume's publicist sent me a review copy of his newly revised and re-released "ethanol bible" entitled, "Alcohol Can Be A Gas."
And I have to tell you, I am impressed by what I've read so far. Blume attempted to publish the book back around 1980, about the same time he was doing a local televison show in San Francisco about making your own motor fuel. Then, according to him, the oil companies lowered the boom and he found his show and book deal cancelled. He barely saved his original manuscript and now, more than 20 years later, we're pretty much back where we started.. only more dependent than ever on imported oil.
I will interview David in the near future, but here's an interesting tidbit I have already gleaned from the first few chapters. It is his contention and others from whom he draws his information that Prohibition wasn't about ridding America of the sin of drunkeness (even the Apostle Paul allowed Timothy to use wine in moderation). It was about crushing the network of farm-operated distilleries that were producing ethanol -- then for the war effort -- which was the chief competitor to gasoline in the newly emerging auto industry. Signed into law in 1919, Prohibition gave the oil companies some 12 years to establish its monopoly on motor fuels. By the time Prohibition was repealed, the farm-based alcohol fuel industry was in a shambles and even Henry Ford had stopped making his cars capable of burning either gasoline or alcohol (the spark advance on the Model T allowed you to manually adjust the timing for either fuel. Today we do it with computers).
David, who is also a pioneer organic farmer, has a lot to say as well about our industrialized agriculture where it takes 1 calorie of fossil fuel to make 1 calorie of food; not even a remotely sustainable combination.
Related to this, I encourage you to read "The Omnivore's Dilemma", especially the opening chapter about the history of corn; how and why it has come to dominate our culture. It's a fascinating look at a crop on which we all depend far more than we realize, and increasingly so in the food-vs-fuel debate.