Beyond Petroleum? Part 2 of 2.

I singled out BP in the last article because they're talking the talk. Exxon-Mobile is too. I need someone to walk a walk that makes a difference for me now. Only small co-ops and some start-ups are getting into the game thus far. Oil companies are not the monoliths we would think they are. Behind the neighborhood corner Exxon sign is just an average Joe trying to make a living. The Exxon logo comes at a high price for Joe and many Joes or Yusefs scrape by no matter what the price of gas is. The local station owner decides when it is a good idea to carry diesel, or convert existing diesel to biodiesel. The corporate headquarters can help only by honoring an order for biodiesel. So how would a gas station owner make a decision to add biodiesel? The answer is that each one of us needs to demand it. Each one of us needs to first get off of gasoline and second make alternative fuels our number one choice. We will probably pay a premium at first. But I do believe in basic economics - supply and demand. Usually, demand for a good or service precedes supply. It is the high price of the good that attracts suppliers. My father was in the disk drive business in the early years when everyone thought they could be in it. He supplied parts to manufactures. In those early days, if you added up all the firms that thought they could get just 5% of the disk drive market, it would have come to 500%! The glut in supply that pursued made disk drives inexpensive for the people like you and me. It took more than academic projections to attract suppliers. Computers started to become a reality in everyday life. Let us strive to make biodiesl a reality in everyday life. If you own a car with a gasoline engine now, get rid of it. Buy a diesel and get going on alternative fuels. Patronize the small co-ops who sell these fuels and dis' the big oil franchises who don't. The big guys will either become the dinosaurs that made them rich or transform into the enterprises we need them to be. Ultimately, we need to change our buying habits before they change their selling habits. It's not hard. Go onto Ebay and get a beautiful Mercedes Diesel like I did!