Santa Cruz Good Times EcoHero: David Blume

May 19, 2010

The Distiller

It’s hard work saving the planet, but somebody’s got to do it. One person that is seriously making a go of it is David Blume, local environmental activist and author of the book “Alcohol Can Be A Gas!” “In a nutshell, alcohol is liquid solar energy,” Blume explains. Through his book, collaboration with local and national environmental agencies and by plain old word of mouth, this enterprising individual is determined to change the way people think not only about the fuel we use in our cars, but about the way we use energy on a global scale.

Blume’s book explores how the world would be a drastically different place were people to begin using alcohol as fuel. “Alcohol reverses global warming, air pollution would cease to exist in cities and wealth would be redistributed,” he says. Blume isn’t a soapbox environmentalist—he actually practices what he preaches. “I’ve been driving on alcohol in my Ford Ranger for 130,000 miles. You can make alcohol fuel for about 30 cents a gallon. With the tax credits, for every gallon of fuel you make you get a total of 55 cents so you actually make money. The oil companies want to make sure that we never hear about this.”

Not only is it inexpensive and easy (it’s pretty much like making beer,” Blume says) to make or buy alcohol fuel, the scientist explains that most cars can actually run on up to 50 percent alcohol already—it’s simply that most people don’t know that fact, don’t know where to purchase the fuel or don’t know how to make the fuel for themselves.

Another reason Blume is an advocate for alcohol fuel is that the chances of oil spills like the recent Gulf disaster could be drastically reduced. “I predicted a month ago that the spill would round the corner of Florida and eventually wash up on the shores of Washington D.C.,” Blume says. “Methane hydrate is a huge scary issue around the planet for ecologists. If the natural gas comes up and something lights it off, it explodes. That’s why the rig went down. Why are we doing this if we can just make alcohol? No one worries if you have a case of vodka sitting around the house.”

To put the oil scenario into perspective, Blume gives the following statistics: “Only 30 percent of our oil comes from the Middle East, and only 7 percent comes from deep water drilling. That’s a 37 percent drop in our oil consumption and we don’t have to do anything except create more alcohol.”

In fact, Blume is so fired up about the alcohol fuel movement that he has recently started a company called Blume Distillation. Based in Santa Cruz, the company will be a major manufacturer of the fuel that will help to preserve the planet for generations to come. | Leslie Patrick 

For more information about alcohol fuel visit blumedistillation.com.