IT'S TIME TO WEED OUT GREEDY FUEL COMPANIES

Source: The Big Issue (Scotland)

Pub Date: Sept 21, 2000

Published letter: It's time to weed out greedy fuel companies

Author: Alun Buffry

Contact: edit.scot@bigissue.com

IT'S TIME TO WEED OUT GREEDY FUEL COMPANIES

People are so dissatisfied with the price of fuel they are blocking progress on the roads and at oil terminals. For many year we have been at the mercy of suppliers of dangerous and environmentally polluting fuel, coal, gas and oil and nuclear power. The supply of these fuels is in the hands of rich people who ensure high prices and provide the Government in revenue through taxation. But it is we, the people, who pay through the nose in more ways than one.

However, plants are an excellent alternative fuel source that can be converted into alcohol and

used to provide fuel for our vehicles.

A woody plant that can be grown quickly and easily without the necessity of fertilisers or pesticides would be ideal. Even better if the plant produced a commercially viable fruit that had other usages so that the plant material used to make the fuel could be produced virtually free.

When burned, that fuel would release almost the same amounts of carbon dioxide and water as are absorbed during the growing season, but not dangerous pollutants. And if it could be produced at a local level it would grant us independence from the petrochemical industries.

There is an ideal plant. It has been calculated that it could be grown in the UK and elsewhere to produce vast amounts of fuel. Unfortunately it is illegal, because the Government has deemed it undesirable that people should get "high".

The plant is cannabis.

So long as cannabis remains illegal the ideal source of fuel is unusable and economically unviable. If it becomes legal, the parts people smoke will generate enough income to enable us to have virtually cost-free and pollution-free fuel.

That is the demand that we should now be making. It is based upon scientific facts and sound economics, not political bias or false morality, and it would favour the people, not the Government and industry.

ALUN BUFFRY