Bill Nelson: “As we close this out--under the previous order, at 4 o'clock we will be in other business--I will continue my drumbeat…”

“As we close this out--under the previous order, at 4 o'clock we will be in other business--I will continue my drumbeat on a daily basis about the need for energy independence. I know what our people in Florida believe. They feel very strongly about it. Before I engaged in the colloquy with the Senator from Illinois, I had intended to talk about some specifics of the use of ethanol and the manufacture of ethanol and how that could help us ween ourselves from dependence on foreign oil. I shall pick that up on another day, but I will continue this daily, trying to sound the alarm for this country that if we don't do something, we will rue the day that we did not. I am told that we might have a couple of more minutes here. I will go ahead and close out some of my comments. As the Senator from Illinois and I discussed in our colloquy, it is true that transportation is where we are consuming most of our oil. If you want to do something about lessening your dependence on foreign oil, go to the place where we consume most of it. That is in our personal vehicles. One thing that we have to do is pursue alternative fuels to petroleum. Gasoline and diesel, petroleum products, accounted for over 98 percent of transportation motor fuels sold in the year 2004. Only 2 percent are from alternatives to petroleum. We need to increase that 2 percent, and it can come from many different sources of alternatives to petroleum, such as ethanol.…”