[thackney]

You can narrowly define what fuel use you are talking about to make the numbers look good. But only 7.7% of the vehicles in Brazil are Flex Fuel. Airplanes do not run a diesel. Large ships typically use fuel oil. Commercial vehicles like trucks and buses are a large part of the fuel consumed and I don't understand excluding them.

Brazil gained their energy independence primarily by increasing their oil production. Their ethanol use does not come close to the increase in petroleum production over the last couple decades. Ethanolby volume is about 8% of the petroleum produced in Brazil. It certainly helps, but Brazil got energy independence the same way we should, by producing their natural resources.

[TKDietz]

I don't have a problem with doing more drilling for our own oil, but our oil reserves are not going to last forever. Not only that, but it's going to become harder and harder to find new reserves, harder and more expensive to get at these reserves, harder and more costly to refine the crude. The crude that's easy to come by and easy to refine is getting used up. As time goes on gasoline production cost are going to go up as will the price of crude. It makes sense to me to start supplementing our fuel supply with alternative fuels.