I am amazed that there’s not a revolt in the streets as news of Exxon’s recent quarterly profits breaks. Another almost $11 billion in their coffers as motorists continue to have their wallets raped. And while I acknowledge that gas may still be less expensive here than in Europe, I would remind those who remind me of that about the general lack of the kinds of transportation options available to most Americans, options Europeans take for granted.
Exxon’s obscene profits are particularly galling when I learn that gasoline is actually a waste product, a byproduct of the refining process that oil companies could actually give away without really losing money, that they make most of their money from a barrel of oil on petrochemicals, for example, that before the advent of the gasoline engine the leftover gas was burned off. (Read this for more)
I dream of the morning when Exxon will wake up to find that demand for gasoline has suddenly evaporated, leaving their high-ranking corporate officers scratching their heads and their shareholders holding worthless shares. Could such a thing happen? Certainly not overnight. And certainly not because of anything our elected officials did that was even the slightest bit constructive.
But maybe it will begin to happen at the grass roots. Maybe localities will start innovating in small ways, and it will catch on. Like Buncombe County, NC, for instance — where I live. The county is using a process that extracts methane gas from the landfill and uses it to power an on-site power generation plant that contributes enough electricity to the grid to power 650 homes. And it appears to be happening elsewhere as well.
No doubt about it — there’s gold in waste… and waste is something we’ll never run out of. There’s gold in garbage, and there’s gold in poop. Some communities already extract methane from sewage, and it’s long been known that we can produce methane from animal manure. North Carolina, one of the leading hog-producing states in the country, certainly has an abundance of pig manure that can be put to good use.
It’s not the whole future, but it’s part of it. Or it should be. It’s one way to tell Exxon and its sister companies that their days are numbered. They may scoff now, but they’d better know — we’ve got a lot more waste than they’ve got oil. And, come to think of it, maybe they do know. Maybe that’s why they’re scalping us now, because they see the handwriting on the wall.
Liberal Buzz 