Commentary

Taking a Bite out of America's Energy Crunch


        In response to what experts are calling a "fat epidemic" Texas governor Rick Perry recently held America's first Fat Summit. Instead of a traditional "diet and exercise" based approach, the governor commissioned a team of America's most renowned fat experts to come up with an "out-of the-box" solution. "Texas has five of the fattest ten cities in America, including Houston, the world's fattest city. With all the diet stuff goin around it's obvious that won't work. And people are too busy watching TV and having cookouts to exercise, so we know that's not a solution either. Besides, the economic impact of our spatially challenged people is a tremendous positive. What I hoped to accomplish was a practical solution to this epidemic-one that allows the people to eat all they want and still remain productive citizens in other areas", stated Perry. "Right now there are some issues with larger people, but they are mostly related to poor education of the public. We hope to change some of the misconceptions and perceptions that the public has about fat in general. Our idea is to turn the whole thing into one big positive."


 

                                                Fat as an Alternative Energy Source


        Dr. Raju Patel of Harvard University, the summit's keynote speaker, received the Welch Foundation's prestigious Medal of Excellence for his work in Fat Research. "Right now in America, 61% of the people are overweight. Moreover, 27% of Americans are obese, 30 pounds or more overweight. This corresponds to approximately 50 million people. Of these, 2-3% are considered morbidly obese. Morbid obesity is defined as obesity that requires medical intervention and is typically defined as 100 pounds or more overweight", Patel explained. "This means that as many as six million Americans are morbidly obese. That is more than three times the number of people enlisted in America's military." Patel described a day at the beach when his idea came to him. "There must be some use for all this fat I'm seeing, I thought. Then it hit me. People can donate fat in much the same way that they can donate blood. And the fat can be put to good use."  Patel's Ivy-league mind then went to work. He described how he was so excited about the revelation that he wrote equations in the sand to calculate the energy savings. "If one is conservative and takes the 30 pounds of excess fat from the 50 million obese people in America, and consider that 9 kilocalories of energy can be generated from one gram of fat and notes that there are 4.184 joules per calorie, we see that we have over 25 trillion joules of energy from fat. Since there are 3.6 million joules in a kilowatt hour, this means that over 7 million kilowatt hours can be generated from excess fat." Patel used the same logic to show that almost 3 million kilowatt hours could be generated from the morbidly obese.
        These numbers sounded promising until former Enron executive Kenneth Lay pointed out that the average American family uses over 6000 kilowatt hours per year to power their houses. This means that the energy from the excess fat would only be enough to "power about 1600 families- an insignificant amount", Lay pointed out. "Besides, fat people are the ones using most of the energy. Any excess supply would quickly be gobbled up by the fat people themselves." Chuckles arose form the crowd as Patel countered that the amount would be enough to provide power for all the Enron employees that are now out of work.
        Bill Larson of the Department of Energy agreed with Lay. "Patel has some good ideas, but his approach is much too ivory tower. The excess fat would be much better used as a fuel source for automobiles. We already have plenty of data that shows that cars driven by fats like vegetable oils are almost as efficient as those driven by traditional petroleum products. If you convert the excess people fat to gallons you see that over 280 million gallons of fuel can be generated. This represents over 0.7% of America's fuel consumption- enough to make a real impact on prices." Put another way, this is enough gas to fuel over 270,000 families for a year. That would be like providing gas for all of Cleveland or Indianapolis.
        Though Larson and Patel differed on how the excess fat should be used, they did agree on one key point. "Best of all it's a truly renewable source", said Patel. "Fat people just keep getting fatter and there seems to be no end in sight. If people keep getting fat at the rate they are today, as much as 20% of our energy could be provided by the excess by the year 2050. And that is encouraging."
 


            Fat family in Houston, Texas.



 

A Fat Tax May be the Answer

 
Still, not everyone was impressed by the arguments. "Fat people are just that- fat people," said Bruce Tyner of PETA. "Why would they willingly give up their own fat? They eat an inordinate amount of food and are responsible for the needless pain and suffering of billions of animals each year. Besides, they take up too much space and cause the fuel efficiency of cars and planes they are riding in to be dramatically decreased. Our research shows that fat people would replace their own fat at double the weight once it was removed. It would be like subsidizing fat. And that is unacceptable. What we propose is a fat tax. It would be a sliding scale." PETA proposes a grace amount for people 10 or less pounds overweight and the tax would increase from there. People 10-30 pounds would be taxed at 10% over their current tax rate. People 30-50 pounds overweight would be taxed at 20% more and so on. "The only way to stop the fat epidemic in its tracks is to tax it into oblivion. If fat people are hit in the pocketbook, then at least they can't eat as much. And, ultimately, it is for their own good. With a fat tax everyone is a winner."
            Patient after successful fat removal operation.