The future belongs to the frugal.
Here's a quote from an article on the BioMass conversion company called Changing World Technologies. This is the company that can change sewage, municipal trash, industrial & agricultural wastes to oil for
$15@barrel. Who are the backers and how is the company being funded?
This is not being funded by some eccentric billionaire. The impressive results from the Philadelphia plant convinced the US environmental protection agency to put up $14.5m (£9m) to fund four more plants, while private investors are backing the Missouri plant to the tune of $40m (£25m). The company, Changing World Technologies, has also acquired such powerful friends as James Woolsey, former CIA director, and Alf Andreassen, former science adviser to George Bush. It's worth mentioning such well-connected backers because, says chief executive officer Brian Appel: "When people first hear about us they always say they don't believe it."
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/footnmouth/zwaste2.html There are immense implications to this technology. Not only would you clean up waste and give energy independence to the USA but this technology could yield a distributed energy system. You could site an electrical power generation plant at the garbage dump of every city. This might help solve some grid and financial problems in California and New York for starters.
There's more.
"You are not only cleaning up waste: you are talking about the distributed generation of oil all over the world" says Michael Roberts, an engineer with the Gas Technology Institute.
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/footnmouth/zwaste2.html Having won energy independence for the US-- this technolgy could win energy indendence for the rest of the world.
I live in an upper middle class neighborhood in a suburb outside of Washington DC. Every year more and more of the upper middle class from ailing cities in south and central America, the middle and far east buy houses and settle my neighborhood. Their home cities are disfunctional--on a scale that dwarfs the problems of California and New York. But what would happen if all the trash & sewage of those ailing cities were turned to oil? I think more money would be available for those muncipalities. This might improve their financial health.
Here's a couple more articles on the same subject. Might be appropriate to pass this around.
http://www.discover.com/may_03/gthere.html?article=featoil.html http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030717/energy_garbage_1.html http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2003/Burn-Turkey-Waste-Energy16may03.htm http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/940151.asp?0sl=-42 http://www.matr.net/article-6837.html http://www.spiritofmaat.com/announce/newoil.htm http://www.petroretail.net/fon/2003/0306/0306nt.asp This is the company website
http://www.changingworldtech.com/techfr.htm