It's not easy being a green NASCAR fan. There's more than a little cognitive dissonance involved. You've got to reconcile your sense of obligation to the planet that gave you birth, your responsibility to your grand-kids, with the fact that a high octane-burning V8 is just damn cool. When you hear those 43 engines roaring by at 200 m.p.h. and see them casting off used rubber five or six times each race, and you smell that heady perfume of burning fossil fuels...you just feel like an a-hole the next day lecturing other people about how they should recycle more, you know?
But maybe there's a solution. ESPN.com's Ryan McGee puts forth the possibility that one day NASCAR's big guns could fun on alternative fuel made from kudzu. Sweet. You'd be killing about a half-dozen birds with one stone, if you could make it work. For starters, that mess is everywhere. Kudzu's got to be a better source of ethanol (as are many plants, such as sugar cane). And unlike corn, people all over the world don't need to eat it. (How screwed up is that, by the way? Here's this substance, and you can either eat it or use it to power a car. Guess what the U.S. government wants to do. One thing on which I don't agree with Barack Obama.)
I can see it now - thanks to new kudzu fuel, the entire Southeastern U.S. turns into the 1980s version of West Texas, only without the Bushes. And we still get our racin'. Ooh, even better idea: let's tariff the hell out of it, just as a "f*ck you" to those Midwestern corn-loving states who expect our federal tax-dollars to subsidize their inferior corn-ethanol. (I'm tired of spending money protecting industries that can't hack it on their own, aren't you?) All those stereotypes of people who live in Appalachia? Gone, 'cause guess who lives in the kudzu capital of the world? That's right - who you calling redneck now, bitches?!? Go pump my kudzu-gas.
(Okay, I'm excited now, we totally need to make this happen!)
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