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render cities or regions dark for perhaps weeks until power lines were restored as each home would be independent power producers.
Even now, when gasoline is at $3 or more a gallon, hybrid car sales are slow. The federal deduction allowed for a hybrid purchase does not offset the premium paid by the buyer when they purchase a hybrid. Consumers are savvy and they understand that until gas prices get much higher they are losing money by purchasing a hybrid. The federal government, if serious about energy independence, needs to increase the deduction allowed for a hybrid purchase.
The backyard inventor can sometimes be more resourceful than major corporations. One inventor has taken a Toyota gas-electric hybrid and adapted solar cells on the roof of the car to produce a vehicle which is 85% more efficient.
The only thing holding back innovations such as these are government incentives. Incentives are needed to spur offshoot inventions, improve models and increase efficiency. At the same time, government incentives allow fledgling industries to grow and concentrate on marketing to consumers which in turn grows the industry while increased sales lower production and consumer costs.
Sometimes only an attitude change is needed to produce technological advances. Take industrial hemp as an example. Industrial hemp is just like your average marijuana plant except it has such a low THC -- the chemical which produces a high-- that you'd have to smoke an acre of it to get a buzz. Industrial hemp is a fantastic crop from which clothing, acid free paper, rot-proof thread and 60,000 other articles can be produced from it including plastics (which are made from petroleum) and petroleum itself. Another fuel, alcohol, could be made from it and the crop needs no fertilizers (petroleum based) and little, if any irrigation. But government is afraid real marijuana plants could be planted among industrial hemp and somebody might get high. Because of that a great chance to save our dwindling petroleum reserves by replacing petroleum usage is lost.
There are thousands of examples of how we can replace oil usage and improve our lifestyle. In some cases we need only an attitude change, in others we need government incentives and in still other situations government assistance to level the playing field for the backyard inventor.
Whatever the situation, government as a whole must lead. For that we need a leader. A leader is just under a thousand days away at January 20, 2009.
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