Now that an Indian company has produced a $2,500 car, I hope the next step will be to make the car run on biodiesel fuel. That way the car owners can make their own fuel at home from their garbage. At least, that’s the idea I got from reading a story in The Gleaner about a group of 4 H Club members. The story said those kids made diesel fuel from garbage and used it to run their tractor.
Bravo kids!
If we all followed their example, companies like Exxon, which just announced an obscene profit, would be shut out of the loop and the world’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil would be abated.
There was another story, which originated with the Jamaica Information Service, about a farmer who used methane gas from his pigpen to power the family’s stove. The story did mention that the gas from the pigpen had an unpleasant odor, so I’m not sure I would choose this method of cooking my food. But the idea behind the plan is worth considering.
Let’s see if we can figure out a way to live without buying oil or gas. I remember experiments from my youth where aluminum ovens were used to collect solar heat. I bet that technology has come a long way by now. And I remember windmills that produced electricity up in the mountains. And Maggoty Falls. I seem to recall that was an early source of hydroelectricity.
And let’s back development of mass transit. Jamaica owes its early development to a governor who built a railway line from one end of the island to the other, opening up the interior so that farmers could get their goods to market. That’s the way we should go today.
And let’s put our resources and ingenuity behind development of alternative fuels, especially the kind that we can manufacture in our own back yards.
