Gavin’s Newsletter

Gavin’s Newsletter

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Barbara Sinclair's avatar
Barbara Sinclair
Oct 29, 2023

Thanks, dear Gavin, for compiling this extensive list. I see some favorites of mine there and lots to add to my wish list. Hope you are well. Much love from your soul sister in New Hampshire 💚

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Laurie Masters's avatar
Laurie Masters
Nov 1, 2023Edited

Hi, Gavin! (Warning, a crazy-long comment seems to have emerged from me ... I hope someone(s) here finds it interesting enough to read through, as I predict anyone who opens the book I share about here will be glad they did.)

I was on the editorial team that published a rich lifework penned by ecological biologist David Blume, owner of permaculture.com, for whom I worked several years afterward.

"Alcohol Can Be A Gas! Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century" is a 600-page reference tome on every aspect of producing our own liquid solar energy (ethanol), using permaculture principles, and the CSA (community-supported agriculture) business model (community-supported energy).

It's also a riveting historical commentary on Rockefeller, Henry Ford, the American Petroleum Institute (the public relations arm of "the Oilygarchy"), and so much more. And it's filled with slices of Americana, including apt political cartoons and wonderful human interest stories such as when the author and astronaut Gordon Cooper thought their expensive new emissions gauge was broken when the air coming out the tailpipe of an ethanol-fueled jet engine tested cleaner than the ambient air (it wasn't broken, and we did a press briefing in 2010 with board member/actress Daryl Hannah, to encourage the EPA to rule in favor of higher ethanol fuel blends, based on their undeniable environmental benefits.)

Hannah brought the Trans-Am that Quentin Tarantino had gifted her after the "Kill Bill" movie, which our mechanic had converted to be dynamically optimized for any gasoline/ethanol blend up to e85. (Here's a story about it https://energy.agwired.com/2010/03/25/daryl-hannah-promotes-e85-in-california/)

The book is a stunning reveal, evidencing without doubt that we could be energy independent essentially overnight, using a model that does NOT benefit from economies of scale. Local production of our own fuel, at the community scale, is where all the earth-shaking possibilities lie.

That's right -- any fuel-injected vehicle, including yours and mine -- can run nearly 50% ethanol TODAY -- with ZERO conversion and (despite propaganda to the contrary) only benefits for the engine and for performance ... a fact "they" certainly don't want you to know. (And we can power everything -- not just cars.)

During my time at the author's nonprofit, the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture, I worked on a proposal for Sandia Labs, outlining a groundbreaking world-class demonstration center and teaching facility for our permaculture-based small-scale "integrated food/energy farm model. The facility we proposed would have proven that our model presented a fiscally, ecologically, and politically elegant solution to many of our nation’s most pressing problems -- including peak oil, food supply, food & energy safety, climate change, air and water pollution, topsoil erosion, water supply, waste management, sewage treatment, and poverty.

Here is an excerpt from a review of the book, by "Ecotopia" author Ernest Callenbach:

"There is no real scarcity of land to grow fuel. There is a scarcity of independent, original thinking, and Blume’s book provides plenty of it, along with ample doses of amazing, startling, and sometimes scary information—ecological, technological, and political-economic. This is a vast, detailed compendium drawn from decades of experience by an alert, smart, and skeptical hands-on thinker. Blume has given us his biofuels bible, and we can learn from him and survive quite nicely—or follow what he calls MegaOilron into oblivion."

Of course, the Powers that Be control the narrative, causing the entire world to believe all manner of hogwash (as valid as "safe and effective") when it comes to the topic of fueling our planet with liquid solar energy. Although it crushed the other contenders at the 2008 Real Goods/Solar Energy Center's "Alternative Fuels Smackdown," and has the potential to positively affect most everything that matters, the solution described in this priceless book has been buried, not unlike the fate, and the promise, of hemp.

I could spend several hours sharing the broad strokes about what I learned working for the Alcohol Can Be a Gas! project. I often listened in on phone calls from scientists and educators from all over the world, who would repeat the baseless objections that society had taught them to swallow whole cloth without question. (Over those years, I never heard a valid downside to alcohol fuel produced with permaculture principles as described in the book. In fact, even Cornell professor David Pimentel, arguably ethanol's most vocal detractor, had to admit in a private meeting that he could not argue with the premise outlined in the book.)

I can't recommend this great work highly enough. My contribution to its excellence is among my proudest and most meaningful accomplishments.

Here is a link to a very new announcement (less than a month old!) that a DIGITAL VERSION of the book has just been released!

David Blume Releases Digital Version of His Classic Alternative Fuel Book, Alcohol Can Be A Gas!

https://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/david-blume-releases-digital-version-of-his-classic-alternative-fuel-book-alcohol-can-be-a-gas/

Whew! I haven't called up all this passion for the topic in many years ... I certainly didn't expect to write a treatise here; my apologies if anyone has gotten this far.

(As an aside, permies were sadly poisoned, decades ago, with an entirely twisted and libelous mostly false story about Blume and Mollison back in the day, but his work is unparalleled, and he did not deserve the ostracism and ugliness that ensued. Mollison actually spontaneously invited the (entirely self-taught) Blume to teach the farming portion of his first PDC, because it was clear that he knew more than Mollison did on the topic. I mention this in hopes of eliciting an open heart and mind, should any lingering bad blood surface as a result of this share, as I have the other side of the story.)

Peace out! <3

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