I have been thinking about biofuels recently. I think it has been on my mind thanks to a recent car rental experience Joy and I had in California, and thanks to a proposal my City Councilman is making that would over time require all heating oil in New York City to be B20 biodiesel.

I am putting forward some ideas for consideration. I am hoping for some good discussion and maybe even to get the attention of people who can get the attention of lawmakers, because local, state and Federal government involvement would be important for these proposals and I think at least two of the ideas are politically viable.

When most Americans look to biofuels, we see an opportunity for domestic sources of energy to replace some part of the oil we currently import.  We see a chance for American farmers to make money from the millions of miles we travel by car, instead of those funds going to dictators and terrorists.  We see a chance to use a fuel whose carbon content is recycled from one crop to the next, not released into the atmosphere after being sequestered for tens of millions of years.

But we don't see it the way the Bush administration see it.  To their eyes, ethanol looks like another way to relax environmental rules.  

As President Bush promotes ethanol as a green alternative to gasoline, his administration is quietly relaxing environmental rules for dozens of new corn-to-fuel refineries sprouting up across the nation.

There are three kinds of State of the Union address.  

First come the kind of stirring speeches made by Franklin Roosevelt, by John Kennedy, and even by Lyndon Johnson -- the speeches that call us to great purpose.  These speeches take a chance, they go out on a political limb to offer America a change in direction.  They force both the president giving the speech and the public listening to stretch.

Next come the laundry list speeches.  These can often contain significant programs, but they lack any clear sense of direction, and often end up containing so many scattered ideas that it's hard to tell what the president really values.  Bill Clinton, take a bow.

Then come the speeches that tell us absolutely nothing.  No significant information.   No new ideas.  No guts.  No... anything.  That's what we got last night.