Political Humor | Bio-Fuel: The Heston Connection

You Are What You Eat

Lately there seems to be a lot of talk of cannibalism. I know that I’ve mentioned it.

The day before that particular article was posted on this site, Ted Turner –who was married for many years to the very well respected (within conservative circles) Jane Fonda - said that we’d all either be dead or have turned to eating each other in 10 or 30 or 40 years. This, of course, due to the global climate crisis.

Now in Turner Years, 10 or 30 or 40 equates to roughly, about, let me see, somewhere around…Never, in real years. But I say we humor him anyway.

With the recent passing of actor and gun rights advocate, Charlton Heston, I began to ponder this seemingly growing train of thought a bit deeper. What prompted me, was remembering the movie Soylent Green.

Set in a not so future world, where over-population and pollution have destroyed the environment, the government is forced to come-up with a solution to the feed it’s helpless, Nanny State dependents. Sounding a little close to home?

In the movie, the main character, played by Heston, discovers the secret to the life giving foodstuff, Soylent Green. It was supposed to be a combination of soy, lentils, and green algae. Soy and lentils it was. Green algae? Not so much.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, you’ll just have to wait a bit for the secret ingredient to be revealed. So don’t go skipping to the end. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to set-up the punch line for this shaggy dog story.

Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

Since we can’t drill for oil anywhere in the America or build new refineries -the Enviro-Mentals have seen to that- it’s time to look at what we can do. Bio-fuel. I know what you’re thinking. It’s not my favorite solution either but maybe it’s worth a peak.

Bio-fuel can be made from a number of sources. Legumes (beans, beans the magical fruit) are great stuff to make into bio-fuel, due to their high oil content. Soy and lentils fall nicely into this category. Except that soy and lentils feed a lot of hungry people around the world. So what to do?

Enter algae. It’s been shown -to my satisfaction anyway- that certain processed algae could be used as an alternative. It wouldn’t deplete the world’s food supply and it would grow a lot faster, and cheaper. When compared to in the ground crops. Sounds pretty good so far, doesn’t it?

It might be a pretty clean source of fuel except, I don’t care about “Saving the Planet”. Enough has been written about that scam as it is. It’s Tin Pot dictators, petro-dollar speculators and international oil cartel blackmailers that concern me. We need to cut these guys off at the knees.

For the U.S. to be completely independent of foreign oil, all we need is enough ponds or tanks to grow it in. These would roughly cover a space the size of the state of Maryland.

Personally, I’d gladly give that space up. Just not in my backyard, I mean Maryland.

Two Birds With One Stone

Oil is oil is oil, or so it seems. The internal combustion engine just needs something combustionable to move its parts. Petroleum, corn oil, used deep fry grease, it doesn’t care.

With just a few adjustments, a gas or diesel vehicle is up and running on plants. As long as your engine was designed as a multi-fuel burner in the first place. Mine aren’t but I need a new car anyway. And so do you. Why, because you need to do your part. Besides, it’s good for the sagging economy and of course, as always, good for our children’s future.

I believe that we could come up with our own version of Soylent Green. It would need to come from local biomass. Home grown is always best. This shouldn’t be too difficult, nor all that expensive. Not compared to the nation debt anyway.

Now to reveal the secret ingredient. In the movie, Charlton Heston discovers that the real high protein compound in Soylent Green is people. Bringing us back around quite nicely to cannibalism.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we eat people. I’ve got something a little more palatable in mind.

Algae’s wonderful and everything and I’m sure that all on its own it would be just fine. But I’m thinking that we may want to give it a little octane boost.

Oil is oil, grease is grease and an oily used car salesman, or a greasy lawyer or politician or two, or six, would fit that bill nicely. Or maybe we could just wait and round up a whole bunch of unwashed, patchouli oiled, greasy, dread-locked hippies as they gather around the country for the HippieFest concerts. This is happening at about seventeen different locations throughout this summer and fall. There’s going be be more oil there then in ANWR!

What a wonderful world it would be.

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Image Credit: Corn Dusk by Dodo-Bird