Talk Urges Oil Alternatives

Talk Urges Oil Alternatives

by By Rachel Anderson
The Alligator (University of Florida)
March 23, 2006

America is addicted to oil, and Deron Lovaas wants people to know the consequences.

UF's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Americans for Informed Democracy, known as AID, sponsored a town hall lecture on oil dependency Tuesday afternoon at UF's Communicore Building.

AID, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that educates young people in global issues, paid for the event, which was free and open to the public.

Lovaas is the oil security campaign director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., and said there are many alternatives to oil-derived fuels but little awareness of them.

He said America is "the world's biggest addict when it comes to oil," and Americans consume about 20.5 million barrels a day.

The main reason is that people are now taking longer trips and more trips in general, he said.

Transportation is 97 percent dependent on oil-derived fuels, which pollute the air and are primarily produced in Saudi Arabia, an unstable region whose oil is running dry.

Lovaas said the government's current backup plan is to buy oil from eight countries outside of the Middle East, such as Columbia and Angola.

However, he said this plan will make the U.S. more dependent on the Persian Gulf, binding U.S. security and the economy to unstable regions, which would lead to an increase of terrorism.

Lovaas said there is another way - Set America Free, a new coalition with a three-step model.

The group's first goal is to push Detroit, a major car market, toward hybrid cars and call for oil-efficient standards on replacement tires.

Set America Free is also promoting biofuels, such as corn-based ethanol and, as President Bush suggested, switchgrass - a type of hay grown in North America.

"I fell out of my chair when the President talked about [switchgrass] at the State of the Union address," Lovaas said.

The third goal is to invest in transit by bettering the bus systems.

About 20 people attended the lecture, and although not everyone agreed on the solutions Lovaas offered, there was a general consensus that oil dependency is a major crisis.

Jonathan Moore, 31, a UF graduate student studying microbiology, said he supports finding alternatives to petroleum, especially when it comes to transportation.

"It seems like a lot more people drive here than need to," he said. "You can get from one end of Gainesville to the other on a bike in about 10 minutes."

Moore said he usually prefers to walk the four miles from his home, which is near The Oak's Mall, to campus every day.