Obviously, in 2016 it seems a touch out of date, but we should remember that the Saudis allowed the price of gas to fall to current levels
largely as a result of this full flex movement. Gas prices need to hover near the equivalent price per mile that methanol is currently at (before increases in scale, mind you) to dissuade Americans from pushing this issue. The Saudis need to hold off being forced into a newer economy for as long as they can, and this is a last ditch effort.
Having been an advocate for this issue for a number of years and keeping in touch with some of those involved in this documentary prior to its release, I'm thrilled this finally got made and it had some kind of release and recognition. That said, I have a few niggles with it.
First, it's a little too much trying to be all things to all people, as some kind of umbrella or big tent or whatever you want to call it. It's a little lacking focus and pretty much includes nearly every group and topic related to this issue. Laymen watching it may get bored with it as it takes quite a while to arrive at the practical solutions. It's a lengthy build.
Next, I personally would have liked more Robert Zubrin and Anne Korin in this, but there is always YouTube. This particularly would have been useful in explaining the contrast between exploitative single-resource economics around the world and a multi-resource, open market worldwide system. Both have done a fantastic job elucidating just how preyed-upon the poor are right now by the oil structure, not just with indentured servitude to the industry or the lack of opportunity, but the recruitment into fundamentalism and terror that now exists with such low-diversity and low-opportunity economics, and how revolutionary it will be if we can change this.
There's a little too much of the Methanol Institute and other potentially profit-reaping parties in it, which might come off as self-serving.
No mention of the auto bailout czar Steven Rattner putting both an Exxon guy (Ed Whitacre) and a Carlyle Group guy (Dan Akerson) in charge of GM during "restructuring". Before the auto "crisis", GM had promised to voluntarily begin a move to G.E.M. flex. Guess what conveniently happened to that strategy.
Nothing on the FTC strangely considering this issue to be totally separate from anti-trust, though they've gone after some of these same companies for inane things like misstating lawnmower engine horsepower.
Not a peep about Wall Street energy funds, oil sheikhs in the Gulf, and big oil all being the major, unified shareholders and influences on car companies. Don't go thinking the discordant Ford family is a unified voting block.
There was no mention of the late Roberta J. Nichols of Ford Motor. If you'll indulge me on a tangent, I had the opportunity to do a presentation for Ford reps covering this whole thing a while back. My intent was to regurgitate their own (in my opinion, accurate) internal assessments of electric's difficult and low profitability path ahead, followed by pointing out they'd already invented a cheaper, shorter-term technology they could additionally market and own the spin on. Unfortunately, one of my team members got a little ahead of themselves and jumped forward in the script to this surprise concluding reveal during the introduction, causing an attorney watching us to nearly lose his sh-- at how off message we were and outside the scope of what we were supposed to be presenting on. I'm fairly confident the presentation would have received a more positive response had my script (I was team leader) been followed with the argument arc developed in a logical manner. I don't think the Ford reps were ever going to do anything about it, but I wanted to at least get them talking.
Finally, the very title Pump is focusing on the supply-side. I fundamentally disagree with such an emphasis and approach to this topic. The key to success is on the demand-side end. The supply- side always follows naturally after the widespread capability and awareness is first achieved. While the documentary does finally bring up legislative efforts to mandate full activated G.E.M. flex on all new gas-using cars sold at no significant additional cost to anyone, it dwells excessively on the supply-side concerning what is at the pump currently and should be. I prefer focusing on the capability mandate end, and much of the resistance to such mandates can be easily dismantled by going through various other more expensive and basically universally successful such technology mandates. Any time spent on the supply-side I find inevitably leads people on the right to successfully attack their history of problems, and on the left you get people saying all we need is more of the same very slowly, like going from E15 to E25 in so many number of years. It's a waste of people's patience. If they're watching, you have their attention and you'd better make use of it as efficiently as possible.
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