BLOOMINGTON - Best-selling author Robert Zubrin's answer to the world energy crisis comes down to a card game strategy. In cards, a trump suit can defeat all others.

The same is true with fuels, only the suits are oil, coal, natural gas and biomass, said Zubrin, author of "Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil" and the featured speaker for the Illinois Commodity Conference in Bloomington.

"Right now, oil is the trump suit. … Oil is the suit in which the enemy is long and we are short," Zubrin said Tuesday. "To win the game, you've got to change the trump suit. That's the winning play."

If biomass became trump, the United States would be in excellent shape, Zubrin said. To make that change, Congress should pass a law that every new car sold in the United States be a flex-fuel vehicle, he said.

Zubrin's presentation was part of a daylong event with the theme "Energy and the Future: A Closer Look at Food, Feed & Fuel." Several commodity groups sponsored the conference for about 300 attendees at the Doubletree Hotel & Conference Center.

Ethanol or similar fuels would switch the control over the world's fuel, which translates to control over the world's future, Zubrin said.

The biggest threat Zubrin envisions is the United States could be taken advantage of during a stock market crash.

In 2008, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will clear $1.5 trillion in net export profits. At current rates, OPEC would have enough funds to buy majority control in every company in the U.S. Fortune 500, the total worth of which was valued at $18 trillion in September, Zubrin said.

In addition, oil price rigging has severe economic impacts on other parts of the globe, Zubrin said.

"As bad as high oil prices hit you, they hit poor people in the Third World much, much worse," he said.

Oil prices have skyrocketed not so much because of increased demand from China and Japan but because OPEC manipulates the oil market, Zubrin said. Crude oil production in non-OPEC countries has doubled since 1973 while OPEC's production has not increased, he said.

The cost of oil near $50 a barrel now seems low after the summer's high of more than $140 a barrel, Zubrin said. But the price, which was $11 a barrel in 1999, would really only be $16 a barrel today with adjustments for inflation, he said.

"It shot up like a rocket because OPEC was constricting production in the face of growing demand," he said.

The situation could worsen if nothing changes, Zubrin said. That's why he urged the audience to contact their representatives and senators about flexible-fuel choices. Within three years of a flexible-fuel mandate, 50 million U.S. cars, and hundreds of millions of vehicles worldwide, could use alcohol fuels, Zubrin said. Oil would then have to compete with other fuels, he said.

"This kind of money isn't just money," Zubrin said. "This kind of money is power."