Oil: A clear and present danger

An opinion article appeared on the Wall Street Journal webpage today - it is authored by Robert McFarlane, who served as President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, and George Philippidis, who is energy director at Florida International University in Miami.

In the article -- view it here -- the authors say the escalation in oil and food prices is a "clear and present danger to our economy and national security" and that the root cause of the crisis is "our dependence on a single commodity, oil, for transportation -- we burn 145 billion gallons of gasoline a year."

Here's a good comment:

The public has been bombarded with lies and half-truths about biofuels, especially in the last six months. Americans should realize that biofuels are superior to fossil fuels. Biofuels are renewable, nontoxic and biodegradable. They are also beneficial to the automobile engine, the environment and the economy.

And another:

Energy security can not be achieved with a silver bullet. It is not a competition between corn ethanol and sugarcane ethanol or between biofuels and plug-in hybrids. The sooner we realize that U.S. energy security needs all of the above, the sooner our country will be able to commit to a coherent long-term energy policy.

Besides pushing for more flex-fuel vehicles, McFarlane and Philippidis argue that biofuels from Latin America should become an integral part of U.S. energy strategy. Although corn growers and U.S. ethanol producers may not agree with some of their ideas along those lines, their take on the importance of ethanol to diversifying our fuel supplies is spot on.