This is why corn-based products are so cheap in the marketplace, by the way: high-fructose corn syrup is dirt cheap, so it's added to a surprisingly large array of foods and beverages (all non-diet soft drinks are sweetened with it, for starters). We've got corn chips, corn syrups, corn breads, corn cereals, and of course corn-fed beef. In fact, more than 50% of all commercially produced foods contain molecules that originally came from corn. Corn is everywhere, and the only way the corn industry can get rid of it all is to force-feed it to U.S. consumers.
But now there's a better solution: ethanol from corn. We already have ethanol added to gasoline at the gas pump, which helps get rid of some of the corn, but what if we could power our homes, businesses and industrial complexes off corn? Well now we can.
Researchers have produced a tiny hydrogen reactor that can take ethanol from corn (which is dirt cheap) and covert it directly into electricity. You don't have to burn it, there are no harmful waste products, and it produces a steady stream of electricity from a unit no bigger than a television set. This unit could power homes, businesses, and possibly even automobiles.
In the prototype, the unit produced a steady 1 KW of power. That's not quite enough for most homes, but it's close. With some evolution in the technology, doubling the output probably isn't too far off. A steady 2KW of power is sufficient for many homes, and for those homes that need more power, these units can obviously operate in series to double, triple or quadruple the output.
Now step back for a minute and consider the possibilities here. Instead of engaging in wars to control oil supplies in the Middle East, we could just tell our U.S. farmers to start growing more corn. We'd stop paying them to NOT grow corn and ask them to grow more. All that corn would be refined into ethanol, and that ethanol would produce the electricity needed to power our entire economy. It's power from the sun. It's renewable, it's clean, and it's all doable right now. This solves at least five big problems all at once: 1) dependence on foreign oil, 2) limited supply of fossil fuels, 3) environmental pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels, 4) global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels, 5) oversupply of corn in the U.S..
So what's keeping this from becoming mainstream? It's the money, stupid. There's tremendous profit and control in the existing oil economy. President Bush and his buddies are steeped in the fossil fuel economy and reaping obscene profits from our dependence on oil. There's no motivation for the people in charge to move to a clean fuel economy, and the need for oil provides lots of justification to start wars, scare the American people into forfeiting the Bill of Rights, and all sorts of other ploys that pay off for a handful of people who, unfortunately, run the show right now.
But clean fuel is here right now. It's proven, it's doable, and it's a much better choice than fossil fuels. We don't need oil, we don't need wars, and we certainly don't need a stodgy old group of oil barons running our country and foreign policy. It's time to switch to something cleaner, both in terms of politics and fuels. And this tiny hydrogen reactor could be the catalyst for real change.
Don't make the mistake of thinking we're dependent on oil. We're not. It's a political ploy. Hydrogen power is available right now, or at least in the VERY near future. If we wanted to, we could start growing corn, building hydrogen reactors, and start powering our homes with this technology in under five years. There's absolutely nothing in the way except for the people in charge who have a vested interest in keeping us all steeped in the oil economy.