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A brief history of fuel
I heard something interesting yesterday, call it a sort of pre-history of the modern ethanol debate. Back when cars were invented, gasoline wasn't the original fuel. Apparently, grain alcohol was. Gasoline was a toxic waste byproduct of the process that refined heating and lighting fuel. Gasoline was just being thrown away (we might also say illegally dumped) by J.D. Rockefeller until he realized that a car could be powered by it. It was then--and still is--a dirty fuel, but it was cheap, since it was treated as a waste product rather than created for its own sake.
From what I understand, gasoline was sold in the cities where the refineries were, but out in the country people used alcohol to power their vehicles. In the 1800s and early 1900s, every farm had its own still to make alcohol, for lighting, heating, disinfecting, food processing and, oh yeah, a beverage too. Ford's Model A was built to run alcohol, then later made to be switched between alcohol and gasoline. You had to change the air-fuel mixture and tune the car differently because of the octane difference. That went into the early 1900s, when Rockefeller donated $4 million to the Women's Christian Temperance Union to push Prohibition. And here I thought Rockefeller didn't like unions! His motivation seems to have been to win the VHS-Beta debate of his time, outlawing alcohol and making gasoline the winner by default, rather than for any moral reasons. Obviously, it worked.
It not only resulted in great profits for Rockefeller but in a system that puts and keeps money in the hands of big corporate interests. As moonshiners amply attest, making and distilling alcohol at home can be done by just about anyone. Good luck making your own gasoline, even if you did have a source of crude oil in your back yard.
Of course, is anyone really surprised to see the course of events manipulated by those with lots of money in order to ensure a growing and continuing process of concentrating wealth?
All of this was embedded in a conversation with David Blume, who is a big modern proponent of alcohol (Ethanol), which is a separate issue, but I found that little jaunt into our nation's history interesting.
Your thoughts are, as always, most welcome.