Column: Rick Mummert, Guest Column

It is no secret that shocking gasoline prices are squeezing Minnesota families. We’re seeing gas reach $4 a gallon — double what it was just a few years ago.

With the long driving distances of a state like Minnesota, that’s forcing budgets even tighter. I’m sure that some households are being forced to make decisions between filling the tank for the drive to work — or paying for essentials like groceries or prescriptions.

We can’t predict if gasoline prices will plunge back to earth. But one thing we do know is that without a fundamental shift in our nation’s energy policy, the people of Minnesota and the rest of the nation will continue to be held hostage by a volatile oil market and the cartel of foreign nations that influence it.

When you step back and put it all in perspective, you realize just how far off course our nation has gone.

Our nation pumps $400 billion out of our economy and into the economies of oil-producing foreign nations every year. That’s money that ought to stay here employing Americans, instead of enriching Saudi and Venezuelan oil barons.

We have sent generations of soldiers into warfare in the Middle East — solely to protect oil shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf. Our nation has had continual combat operations in the Middle East since 1991 — two solid decades of war to keep ExxonMobil and other global oil companies wealthy. Princeton University figures taxpayers have spent $7.3 trillion for military operations in the Middle East since 1976.

But the hidden costs of our addiction to oil don’t stop there.

Particle pollution — caused by the hazardous and carcinogenic material found in gasoline refined from oil — is linked to a deadly encyclopedia of serious health effects, such as asthma, cancer and premature death in as many as 100,000 adults and children annually.

We do not have to accept this. There is an alternative that is cleaner, more affordable and doesn’t put our country at the mercy of foreign strongmen and dictators. That alternative is ethanol.

First, we don’t have to wait forever for ethanol, like we do with hydrogen, electric cars or any other someday fuel. Grain ethanol is already here and commercially viable — replacing foreign oil and cutting harmful automobile emissions by as much as 59 percent, according to studies published by Yale University.

Oil’s near-monopoly on the market and oil’s control over Congress are why ethanol has yet to reach its potential. Federal regulations that cap ethanol’s market essentially work as a mandate that consumers put gasoline refined from oil into their vehicles.

Here in Minnesota, we blend 10 percent ethanol into our gasoline resulting in substantial environmental and economic benefits. Creating access to higher blends will further reduce greenhouse gas emissions and displace significant volumes of imported oil.

There is one group that is trying to make a difference. Growth Energy proposed its Fueling Freedom plan last year to increase the number of flex-fuel pumps, capable of dispensing several grades of ethanol and gasoline combinations, at filling stations.

Flex-fuel pumps allow the consumer to choose their fuel blend based on price and performance. Seventy of these pumps are in Minnesota, but we need more to accelerate our nation’s progress toward energy independence.

The Fueling Freedom plan would build an infrastructure that would create a fair and open market where ethanol can compete with oil.

If we had more flex-fuel pumps in the ground, and more flex-fuel cars on the road, consumers would be able to make a choice in their fuel based on price and performance, instead of having their choice made for them.

We have had the opportunity in the past to break this chain. Today we have the technology and the know-how to do something about it. But we must get Congress to enact policies that will ensure access to clean, domestically-produced alternatives like ethanol if we are ever to break the hold that Middle East oil has over our country.

Rick Mummert is the general manager of the Poet Glenville ethanol plant.