Urintopia: Where "One for the Road" could help you on the road.

I'm a big fan of scatological science, and it amuses me greatly when hard science shows us just how deluded we can be.
Now, I've know about this for a while, or at least, the Non-Fictional half of me has known about this for at least a year before he invented the fictional person who now writes this brief missive.

Here, we once again get into that idea of truth versus Truth.  Because the Truth is that our reliance on petroleum is an addiction.  My paternal GrandCreator, (that is the man who created the character of my father, Kilgore, not the Grand Creator of the Universe, but just a self-effacing, shabby, chain-smoking old man named Kurt Vonnegut, Jr,) once wrote:  "We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial.  And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get whatever is left of what we're hooked on."

Ain't that the truth?  Two wars in recent history, a deliberate destabilization of the Middle East, and Saudi princes living like pimps and pushers while the people they rule starve in the streets.

Petroleum is king, and you can't escape from that.  We're running out of it.  Getting it destroys the environment, (look at the mess BP has made of the Gulf.  Look at the mess we've made with the military in another Gulf, and take a drive through any town that ISN'T Huntington or Charleston in West-By-God Virginia! (There's a great modern folksong I've heard about the strip mining industry in the state.  One of the lyrics is "West Virginia, Almost Level...")

Using it kills us too.  Petroleum pollutes the air, runs off into our groundwater that we grow our crops from, fills our landfills with shit that will be there long after our species has committed collective suicide, and causes irreparable damage to our ecosystem.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is blowing smoke up your ass.  They're PR Spokesperson spin doctors who should be forced to live down stream from a petrochemical plant, because I guarantee you their kids never had to have "Shelter in Place" drills at their schools.  I grew up in an area along the Ohio River where steel mills were replaced throughout the 60's and 70's with chemical plants.  Ashland Oil was right there in Ashland Kentucky, but then they moved away and took their jobs with them, (so, if Ashland Oil isn't in Ashland anymore, then who are they?)

The people once employed by Ashland Oil and the plethora of steel mills are NOW employed by companies like Dow Chemical, Aristech, and a handful of others.  The two biggest employers in that entire section of the Ohio Valley are chemical refineries and large hospitals.  They are the biggest industries, because when you're a big corporate healthcare company, you build hospitals where the sick people are.  That section of the Ohio Valley happens to have one of the largest concentrations of cancer patients in North America.

Now, a good amount of that admittedly is cultural.  Smoking, drinking, and ESPECIALLY diet trends in that area certainly lean toward high cancer rates, but it's not ALL from that.

People who live in the region cheer when a new petrochemical plant is being built.  The state and local governments offer tax cuts to the corporations that own them, and sometimes look the other way when a health hazard comes up to smooth things over.  There's a spill, and locals threaten to sue or push for higher regulations.  The corporations say that the extra costs involved will make it impossible to keep the plant open, so those wronged are pressured to quit bitching for the "Good of the Community."

And so it goes.

People go to work every day to make the chemicals that kill them, their neighbors, and their children so they don't die of starvation or exposure because they can't afford food and shelter.  They trade a quick death for a slow, painful one.


And so it goes.

If we step away from the scene...Just sort of go "One Step Up" in our little macrocosm.  If we look at our species as a whole...As one gigantic organism in which we're just cells within organ systems within a Gestalt Organism...I have a feeling, the big "Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan" looking thing that is "Us-on-a-Grand-Scale" would look like a junkie on the street.  It's killing our cells, but our central nervous system, (our government structures, local and national,) want more NEED MORE!  Their commerce and livelyhood depend on it.  But it's killing off individual cells.  We KNOW this.  The Central Nervous system knows it, but it's still craves more.  It sends mixed signals down the wires to the individual cells, (us,) through the nervous system, (the media.) 

We're euphoric over it:  Monster truck rallys, Nascar, our lust for Hummers, Hemi's and more fucking horsepower, (and I think it's not a coincidence that the brand name for the civilian version of the military HUMVEE is also slang for a blowjob.
  
Sure, we do things to make ourselves FEEL better.  We car pool.  We drive hybrids, (the smug asshole solution,) We boycott BP, (a futile gesture, as they don't really give a shit.  They'll sell their oil to SOMEONE.  In fact, growing up where I did, I often saw, and STILL see BP trucks filling the tanks of Speedways, Sunoco's, and little mom-and-pop stations.  Conversely, I've seen John Clarke Oil trucks filling up BP stations, so good luck finding out where that gas comes from.)  But when it all boils down to it, we're not really ADDRESSING the problem.  We're just stepping down from Smack to Morphine to lessen our DT shakes.

The big buzzwords right now are that we need to "Lessen our dependence on foreign oil."  That's the SAFE way for Politicians to appease the Ecological Minded while not pissing off General Motors, but the solution is not "Drill Baby, Drill" in the last few areas of our continent that have managed to remain free of the cancer that is American Industrialization.  That quoted from the vapid bimbo that was almost our Vice President, (you know, Dad downed a Drano cocktail on my 30th birthday when he discovered that Bush and Cheney would spend another term in office.  Political parties aside, if that airhead would have gained the "Runner Up" seat behind a man who could kick over at any moment.  I might have had a Liquid Plumber for Last Call as well.)

We need to lessen our dependence on oil PERIOD.

Yeah.  So, what's the fucking point here?  I've railed about this shit for a bunch of paragraphs now, just like every other blogger, political commentator, armchair politician, and douchebag on the street.

Well, here's my point.  And it's so ridiculous, you know you HAD to hear it from a guy who's only half real.  But I swear to you that THIS is one of those Truth's I've been talking about, and here it is:

We learn to piss gasoline.

"No shit" you say?

Yes, Shit!

Shit, Urine, general biological waste water.  It should work just fine.

Take a look-see here, then come back  I'll still be here:

http://www.ohio.edu/research/communications/e3.cfm

Are you done?  Good.  I'll assume you read the whole thing as instructed.  If you haven't you'll be kinda lost.  Fair warning. 

I got to meet Dr. Gerardine Botte a little over a year ago, before e3 Technologies was around, and when this technology was still in the planning stages.  I sat wide eyed with a grin on my face as she explained the whole process, (simplified, of course for us liberal arts folks,) while these little plastic cars ran around a stage, nothing powering them but lab-simulated piss.


The deal goes like this.

One of the problems with fuel cels is they use up USEFUL water.  Yeah, we have oceans full of the stuff, but we have to desalinize it, and the energy we put into doing that AND breaking it down into it's component two-hydrogen-one-oxygen-atoms-per-molecule becomes a diminishing return on the energy that a hydrogen fuel cel can draw from it.

That, and in places like the West Coast of California and the deserts of Nevada, where consumable water is already a scarce commodity, and power consumption is EXCEEDINGLY high, this creates an even BIGGER drain on their non-existent reserves.

So, Dr. Botte and her associates thought, "What about waste water?"

Waste water like we'd find from animal waste and sewage is stuff we can't exactly consume.  It's polluted.

Polluted with what?

Ammonia!

What is the chemical make-up of Ammonia?

NH3:  Three parts hydrogen to one part of Nitrogen!  33% more hydrogen than we get from water electrolysis alone.

If we break down the water and the ammonia dissolved in it, we get hydrogen for the fuel cels and the by-product is breathable oxygen and nitrogen that can potentially be used as a fertilizer!

As I said, I got to meet Dr. Botte a little over a year ago, and she's a delightfully brilliant woman.  I played with the pee-powered cars, (though I never had the opportunity to actually piss in one of the little fuel tanks to see if it would work, but I'm pretty sure that it would have.)

Let me just say this just one more time because it's so mind-bogglingly simple:

This woman is making automobiles that run on piss.

And we go into orgasmic frenzy when Steve Jobs announces that the iPhone 4 will let you change your fucking screen background?

We applaud GM for making SUVs that finally top 30MPG?

Let's get some fucking perspective here!

THIS IS BRILLIANCE.

THIS IS INNOVATION. 

I draw this to your attention because THIS is how we can REALLY make a difference.  THESE are the kind of steps we need to be taking to quit this addiction cold turkey.

I have no idea if e3 LLC will be offering any type of public stock anytime soon, but I can tell you that I'll be waiting in line when they do.

Not only because it's what we need to do as a species, but also because rather than saying "I'm investing in solar or wind-power technology,"  I want to say, "I support waste technology."  Because when waste becomes valuable, I'll be a rich man.

Because I'm full of it!

And so it goes...