Readers of a several blogs which attack the production of biofuels (read,ethanol) will recognize that the authors are not tuned into biodiesel based on algal oil. Here is my response:

Hoax readers:

I sure wish you folks would study growing algal for food and fuel before you expend time kicking a dead horse. Spirulina offers 75% protein and Chlorella offers up to 50% lipids from which biodiesel can be made. Ponds can be built on an asphalt parking lot or on rocks (not recommended) or put on marginal and highly sodic lands. NREL spent $25 million and 20 years proving that algae can be grown and can be used for algal oil for biodiesel.

Please, Please, get off your horse and examine the microplants which grow naturally in all most all parts of the earth, including on the underside of sea ice and extremely hot vent holes in the Atlantic Trench under tremendous pressure. We can use the cell walls of Chlorella to make ethanol. Rice University is coming up with ways to make ethanol out of just about any biomass. Please, Please, do your homework before spouting off.

Please shut up on the ethanol issue until you have thought through the entire problem. The problem is not the Peak Oil Crisis and the aftermath, the Peak Food Crisis (but important to know about), but the wasteful manner in which society builds huge networks of highways, massive number of vehicles using internal combustion engines and "cheap" fuel (coal) for generation of electricity. We put massive numbers of folks in residential areas ("pods"), then force them to drive to work, to school, to shopping, to medical care, to government buildings and to recreation sites. We have the pods spread all over the place with thin ribbons of roads connecting them -- sort of looks like dumbbells. I call it "Dumbbell Community Planning" (or more exactly, "Dumbbell UnCommunity Displanning"). My take is that these dogmatic "displanners" are actually creating subsides to the oil, transportation and road construction industries.

The enemy is not so much Big Oil, Big Car, Big Gov., Big Bucks, but stupid, short-sighted, ill-informed community planning drones in the employ of cities, counties and some states. These folks are driven by dogmas of planning which no longer work and by NIMBY's who are so stupid as to want to keep their lawns close-clipped and free of dog doo. We need to rip out all the lawns and plant gardens, using organic gardening technology. Permaculture should be our community goal. -- And use the dog doo as fertilizer.

We should encourage the formation of ecovillages along these lines: "We work were we live, and we live where we work." We need to form intentional communities along the lines of Findhorn (www.findhorn.org) and Mondragon Cooperative Corporation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n_Cooperative_Corporation . These are self-sufficient, sustainable communities on vastly different scales.

Findhorn is on the northwest coast of Scotland, has been around over 40 years and is a "village" development with micro businesses supporting its economy. It has a great outreach forum. Get on its email list and visit the website and you will get a fresh view of how we could change our present "Dumbbell" society into more sustainable series of villages -- even urban villages. My experimental IC can be viewed at: http://icdb.org/show.php?r=masa.

Mondragon is a super organization (Parent), has been around for over 50 years, with many daughter cooperatives which together, have a very large economic footprint. It has over 200 companies, is in 20 countries and gross in 2004, over 14 billion dollars. It is the most profitable organization in Spain, has the largest department store chain in Spain which is the third largest chain of its type in EU.

Just ask any School of Business professor in the US, or any government planner to explain the success of Findhorn or Mondragon, and all you'll get is a blank stare. They never heard of IC's solutions to quality of life issues. These folks are simply teaching and following an old dogma of planning and economy which is in its final stages of death and is leading the world into chaos. Mention these facts and all you get are mindsets ensconced in deep denial.

So, get off your grand stage of denial of biofuels and start growing algae for food and fuel; see: http://montanasynergy.wetpaint.com/page/BUSINESS+PLAN+FOR+SPIRULINA+CULTURE+AND+PRODUCTION

Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com