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An Ancient Alternative to Oil

author: Zed B. Starkovich
May 23, 2008 13:46

Billion Dollar Crop

The ONLY way our past foreign policy, and present war, can be justified is if we accept the fundamental premise that WE NEED OIL TO SURVIVE. We must believe that oil is our only source of energy and without it civilization as we know it would collapse. In order to justify more "precision bombing" and selling weapons to terrorists, we must believe that protecting our oil-based economy is the same as protecting the people of America.

This quickly leads to the concept of "overpopulation" and the idea that our planet cannot support this many people, so some have to die. The people of the First World take all the oil we need, while the people of the Third World have to fight for clean food and water, because it is better for them to die than for us to die. Better for Arabs to die than Christians. Better black people die than white people. Better for my neighbor to die than me.

At every level, we allow the fundamental fear of starvation to justify our ignorance and hatred toward anybody who seems different and is therefore perceived as a threat to our family and friends. When self-preservation is our only goal, we can safely justify any actions that seem to protect our lives, no matter how violent, because it is "self-defense."

Unfortunately, this desperation and fear of death is based on a century of lies.

WE DON’T NEED OIL AND NEVER HAVE.

Our forced dependence on the limited supply of petroleum is due entirely to greedy politicians protecting their own business interests instead of the American people.

Everything now done by fossil fuels can be done cheaper and better with renewable natural resources grown on American soil by American farmers. For more than 12,000 years before it was banned in 1937, the world’s number one natural resource for food, fiber, fuel and natural oil was hemp.

All of our energy needs could be supplied by simply allowing farmers to grow hemp on the land our government now pays them to leave fallow. If we were allowed to use the vast amount of natural resources available to us instead of remaining dependent on a limited supply of tightly controlled petrochemical products, the cost of living would be cut dramatically and our planet could easily support 10 times the current population.

Need some examples? When the Diesel engine was built in 1895, its sole purpose was to run on alcohol and vegetable based fuels instead of petroleum. Cars don’t need cleaner engines they need cleaner fuel.

During the raw materials shortage of World War II, Henry Ford built a car "grown from the soil" that ran on hemp ethanol and was made from hemp based organic plastic that was 10 times stronger than steel. If lighter, stronger, cleaner, cars were available 60 years ago, why does the auto industry drag its feet and beg for “tax incentives” to make safer cars today?

Hemp grows like a weed without any pesticides, and hempseeds are the most nutritious food source known to man. Both China and Australia survived widespread famines in the 19th century by eating hempseeds. Today, 30 million children die of malnutrition every year while our “War on Drugs” bans them from growing hemp as a food source because “Marijuana is a deadly drug.”

In case after case, for thousands of uses, hemp products are cheaper, cleaner, and stronger than their petrochemical counterparts.

That is the simple truth and anybody who denies it without doing a little research is a liar or a fool.

It is a question of Hydrocarbons Vs. Carbohydrates. "Fossil Fuels" are complex carbon-based molecules called Hydrocarbons. They take a lot of work to process into usable raw materials and give off deadly toxins as they are broken down. Carbohydrates are simple carbon-based molecules that can be easily broken down into a variety of raw materials for a wide range of industrial uses.

We don't need to pray for some magic technology developed by Dupont or Monsanto to save our lives. The answer has been available for thousands of years. We can either burn clean hemp biomass fuel to boil water and make the steam that turns the turbines that give us our electricity, or we can burn oil and coal and pretend that nuclear power is "Clean Energy”.

The first step to a better future is a mass media that tells us the truth and a government that does what it was elected to do: Protect and defend the people of America.

Unfortunately, our media and politicians are bought and sold by multinational corporations who poison our children and work us to death so they can make a bigger profit and buy more politicians, TV networks, and weapons factories. NBC will never tell you the truth about the devastation of war because they are owned by GE, whose main business is selling weapons of war to the oppressive military regimes of the world.

Our government must allow the people of America to support and invest in our own country instead of giving hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to murderous governments who protect the foreign investments of corrupt multinational corporations.

The only way to stop trading blood for oil is to teach the world that oil is simply unnecessary. The people of America have to know that there are better ways to feed, cloth, shelter and fuel the energy needs of this planet.

We need to teach the children of the world, not bomb them.

Only the truth can set us free.

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