Hempy New Year!

Say what you want about Henry Ford (Hitler-admiring, right-wing extremist asshole is a good place to start), but the man knew cars. He practically invented them, in the American sense of it. And as it turns out, he was an early and passionate advocate of biofuels, according to the Examiner. An article about Ford’s support of biofuels, specifically hemp, was posted on their website back in September, and it links to excerpts of Ford’s fuel philosophies (provided by Hempcar).

“The fuel of the future,” Ford told a NYT reporter, “is going to come from…apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything…there is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented.” Ford is talking about cellulosic ethanol here, and this interview was conducted back in 1925. That’s like hearing Clara Bow predicting celebrity sex tapes or something.

Similar sentiments (about hemp fuel, not sex tapes) have been espoused by ex-Dead Kennedys frontman and political gadfly Jello Biafra, whose “Grow More Pot” speech gives an entertaining summary of American hemp culture and highlights its use as a sustainable fuel source (pt. 1 and pt. 2, courtesy of Youtube).

Granted, the discourse has been hijacked by goofy stoners since Ford’s time and Jello panders to that element a little much, but the larger point is that sustainable fuels are not a trivial, passing fad; they were, in Ford’s time, part of a larger proposal for a broad movement for scientific research to revitalize a then-struggling economy on the verge, as it turned out, of a major depression. We’re kind of in the same position now. But it’s a new year, and that means new opportunities to promote biofuels and sustainable energy that were seriously considered even at the birth of the automobile.