Revolution has many meanings

An interesting concept to ponder: Revolution as a political or economic act tends to mean a breaking with the old, to start something new. See: French, or American, or Industrial, or Green for examples.

Of course, a revolution also has a technical meaning, that of a complete rotation of an object, such as an engine or a record player (I'm barely old enough to remember them.) See RPM for an example. In this sense, a revolution is not a break with the past at all, but a return to the point of origin.

And then, every once in a while, there's a rare combination of both. See this article in this month's American Prospect about the return of the Carbohydrate Economy.

Less than 200 years ago, industrializing societies were carbohydrate economies. In 1820, Americans used two tons of vegetables for every one ton of minerals. Plants were the primary raw material in the production of dyes, chemicals, paints, inks, solvents, construction materials, even energy....

The first plastic was a bioplastic. In the mid-19th century, a British billiard ball company determined that at the rate African elephants were being killed, the supply of ivory could soon be exhausted. The firm offered a handsome prize for a product with properties similar to ivory, yet derived from a more abundant raw material. Two New Jersey printers, John and Isaiah Hyatt, won the prize for a cotton-derived product dubbed collodion.... Later, a new cotton-based plastic called celluloid spawned consumer photography. To this day, many in Hollywood still call their films celluloids, although Steven Spielberg may not remember why.

At the end of the 19th century the names of chemical companies and products often contained a form of the word cellulose, a living chemical consisting of a long string of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen molecules (thus the word carbohydrate). The name of one of the country’s largest chemical manufacturers, Celanese Corporation, was a contraction of “cellulose” and “the easy feeling” of wearing acetate apparel. After celluloid, cellophane, the world’s first film plastic, was introduced to instant success.

By 1920, however, the nation had reversed the vegetable-mineral ratio, using two tons of minerals for every one ton of vegetables. Coal displaced wood for energy. Gasoline-powered cars roamed the streets. Yet outside the nation’s energy markets, living carbon still held its own against fossilized or dead carbon. Rayon, made from wood pulp, was the world’s best-selling synthetic fiber. The first injection molding machines in the 1930s made plastic products from cellulose acetate.

Oh, and for some reason we keep letting the automobile and petroleum industry keep lying to us. Why, why, why?

Consider the instructive history of fuel ethanol.

After World War I, car companies introduced high-compression engines. Existing fuels caused knocking, a result of uneven combustion. The industry feverishly sought an anti-knock additive. Ultimately, it narrowed the choice to two: ethanol or lead. Ethanol would require 10 percent of the gas tank. To achieve the same effect, lead needed less than 1 percent. The car companies, unsurprisingly, chose lead, and stuck to it even after outcries from the public health community about the effects of leaded gasoline.

In the 1970s, as part of its air quality efforts, the Environmental Protection Agency phased out leaded gasoline. ... In the late 1990s, the nation discovered that MTBE was polluting ground water. ...The phase out of MTBE is the primary reason U.S. fuel ethanol consumption has doubled in the last three years.

Regrettably, this does not necessarily mean the market is embracing biofuel. Beginning in 1999, California petitioned the federal government to exempt it from the oxygenate requirement....

There’s an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. To which I would add: Fool me four times, I’m an idiot.