Plea from an Addict

"America needs to end its addiction to foreign oil"--Our President.

Like all addicts, I do things I shouldn't, such as buy gas from the likes of Royal Dutch Shell.
Royal Dutch Shell is the 4th largest corporation on earth. (Who's #1? click here.)
Like all evil corporations, Royal Dutch Shell's priority is making money, no matter the human cost.
Just do a Google search for Royal Dutch Shell and Nigeria. You will find an environmental and social catastrophe. (see above photo)
Every time we pump gas, we're actually pumping blood. Literally - blood;
Nigerian blood, Iraqi blood, and American blood; the carnage that leads into your gas tank is appaling.
Two dollars and seventy-five cents is really quite cheap for a gallon of blood.
What can I do? The guilt is getting pretty heavy.
I can:
1) walk
2) take public transportation
3) have my car converted to run on natural gas or bio-fuel.
4) buy a hybrid
5) buy a diesel

Options 1&2 are nice in theory and I use them when I can, but have you ever dropped your kids off at day-care, then traveled to work, then picked your kids back up at day-care, then got home and collapsed barely before dark on a bus?
Sorry, but as long as I have the choice, I'm going to pick convenience over 5 days a week of living hell. Any human being would do the same.

Now we come to converting my car to a cleaner, cheaper, less bloody form of fuel.
To the tune of $2,000.
Naturally I don't have that kind of cash laying around, so it's unrealistic.

OK, option #4, buy a hybrid. What a joke, some don't even get better gas mileage, and again, too expensive.

Now to #5: buy a diesel.
Did you know that Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, designed it to run on vegetable oil? He wanted farmers to grow their own fuel.
Hello Brilliant. At least it seems brilliant now, back then it was only common sense.
Today, you can't dump a gallon of vegetable oil in your average diesel engine. It still takes some monkey-ing around to covert a diesel engine over, but here's the point: our entire oil problem could have been avoided in the first place.

I don't know how the oil thing got so out of control in such a short time, but I do know that the clock (or time bomb) is ticking and we need an affordable solution fast.
Like 5 years ago.
Options and technology exist, but they are out of reach for Josephine American like me because of the expense.
Please big, bad goverment, big heartless corporations, please Bio Willie, please, do something about this.
I need help.