my heroes have always been cowboys

When it comes to the future of the American empire, i have about the most bleak outlook possible. Encouraging signs come once a blue moon and they tend to be minor and insignificant victories wrapped in a shell of loss.

In the midst of what has been a terrible couple of weeks (mostly because i've worked 18 of the last 19 days) comes some good. I heard this story on NPR this morning and it made me pretty happy. It even made getting out of bed easy. The part about it that gets me is that the truckers, a group of people who tend to be intellectually marginalized by educated people are, at least in this instance, leading the way on a pretty major political issue. It's sort of great to see truckers talking about the concept of using fuel derived from farm grown products as if it were the most logical fucking thing in the world. I mean it IS the most logical thing in the world but you sure can't tell this to the government. I see this situation as proof that there is too great a connection between business and government in america. Think about it: If america wants to stop hostilities from the middle east, all we have to do is stop buying their oil. It is oil money that drive the armies of our "enemies" and it is out thirst for oil that drives our aggression. I think most of us can agree that this is at least partially true (i mean, my dad agrees and he's pretty much my litmus test when it comes to testing out my ideas on the right wing maniacs of america). Also, who the fuck can not sympathize with the plight of the small time farmer in America? I mean, i would expect the red states in the middle of America to have a lot more concern for the family farm than coastal, blue-state city folk, since it is or was THEIR family within the last few generations, but i guess you can't mess with the sort of arguments GW makes. Image how much more sound our country would be if, instead of sending all those ducats overseas, we kept them in the US. Imagine the farmers of America with the power of OPEC. No, i don't think we should stop looking into more radical departures from the internal combustion engine, but in the short term, the switch to biodiesel requires almost no change in infrastructure and immediately reduces greenhouse emissions. And it's made in the USA. What's not to love you fucking corn state-living assholes? In the story, they mention that if the american trucker switches to biodiesel, soccer moms will not be far behind. I don't know if that's true but i sure hope it is.

A year ago, the University Transit Service (my place of employment) switched to a B20 blend in all our buses. The most difficult part of the switch was finding the fuel in the quantities we needed it in. There was no demand for Biodiesel on this scale. After seeing our results and hearing our experiences, many of the local transit organizations are moving toward biodiesel. I was at a joint community info session with some Charlottesville Transit representatives a few weeks ago, and a member of the community asked the director of their organization why they hadn't switched to biodiesel like the University had. As they explained that they were going to start a pilot program in the very near future, i couldn't help but be a little bit hopeful.