Eu também tenho pena, mas do que não investiram antes do gasóleo subir. :) Repare que existem alternativas, mas quem fez contas há dois ou três anos atrás, está neste momento a esfregar as mãos de contente. Você ainda não deve ter actualizado as suas contas. Temos pena.

June 14, 2008
[b]Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol[/b]
Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide ‘renewable petroleum’

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.

The arithmetic of crude oil

What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. “How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?” he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being “prerevenue”.

Inside LS9’s cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant. (…)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece

Não penso que seja optimista. Aliás muitos me chamaram o mesmo nome quando disse que a saída da Europa de Leste India, China das teorias económicas socialistas iria despoletar um crescimento económico extraordinário. Vieram com as teorias da conspiração do costume e ideologia vigente nos media: Os Capitalistas isto e aquilo iriam explorá-los e tornar impossível o desenvolvimento.

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A Terra é ainda grande demais para os Humanos que ocupam só uma pequena parte. Aliás até por cá basta ver como os campos têm sido abandonados. Para alguém tratar deles ou é por zero Euros ou valor simbólico. Ora isso são recursos que podem vir a ser utilizados em caso de necessidade.
Só se pode comprar gasolina(com impostos a 60%) ou água que ainda é mais cara porque houve crescimento económico e desenvolvimento. No início do Século por cá em Portugal em que muitos não podiam comer carne a não ser em dias especiais a maioria dos recursos era devotada á alimentação e ao vestir, mesmo que tivessem tido um carro não o poderiam utilizar.
O que limita as nossas possibilidades é a riqueza e capacidades induzidas pelo fraco crescimento económico.

O quinto ponto do post é interessante e merece mais desenvolvimento. Gostava que explicasse melhor isso.

O Hitler dizia que a culpa era dos “não areanos”! O Busch diz que são os terroristas muçulmanos.Os neoliberais dizem que é o Estado social,os comunas que são os capitalistas “acumuladores de riquesa”…

Se calhar seria melhor colocar a inteligência ao serviço da humanidade em vez da ganância e do terrorismo!