By Jamie Douglas
I think it was called the Perpentum Mobile? Well here it is, compliments of Frederic Chopin:
It is likely to be the only one you will encounter in gravitational environments. Friction and gravity take their toll, no matter what.
Now, about electric or other exotic powered vehicles: We have a few samples cruising around already. But there are a few minor problems with this so called “green solution.” First and foremost, when it comes to transport, there is no green solution. It takes energy to take you from point A to point B. If you walk, you consume calories, which have to be replenished with food supplies that are brought to you by trucks, planes and ships. If you ride a bicycle, all the components are made of materials that contribute to the pollution of the planet, such as aluminum, rubber, and various exotic alloys that are brought deep out of the earth’s crust so that you can have your ultra light Shimano components.
But all that is small change compared to the ultimate wet dream, the electric vehicle, which is completely pollution free, or is it? There is no free lunch, in the real life of energy. It is a constant trade off, ever since the steam engine was invented, or even before that, when mankind discovered fire, used it for heating, cooking, and eventually the forging of metals (and we refer to them of “Homo Primitivus!”). Our ancient forefathers that, through learning about forging and alloying, discovered processes that today make planes fly and space ships go to Cassini. Along the way we discovered the internal combustion engine, by way of Dr. Ferdinand Diesel, and through more sophisticated refinements of petroleum products, discovered gasoline and plastics, amongst many others.
So in the latter part of the 20th century it came to pass, that scientists discovered that the ozone hole over Antartica was getting bigger all the time, and that was likely to bring about global climate change (not global warming as it has been repeatedly and mistakenly called). A lot of the blame for that was of course brought down on automobiles and trucks, and to the credit of the automotive industry, after screaming and kicking, they came up with the catalytic convertor, which turned some of those harmful “greenhouse gases” into “harmless emissions” with which you could still close the garage door and end your financial or marital misery.
So what would be better for the economy than to start marketing electric cars, which will cause the whole neighborhood have to change their entire electrical system, so that every carport will have multiple 220Volt outlets, requiring much bigger transformers, rendering the neighborhood even more unsightly, and causing the occasional sleeping family to “sleep away” while their abode burns to the ground.
Now to the main point of my article: Are electric cars really less polluting than conventional powered cars?
The short answer is a resounding No! But the lengthier, more technical analysis leads us to a slightly different conclusion: Hell no!
While street level emissions may be reduced by a good percentage, every night, when you plug in your EV, power plants, both coal fired and nuclear, are working overtime to supply your lithium ion batteries with their power to take you to and from work or the mall or school, with a full 30% loss in efficiency compared to pouring fossils fuels into your tank, which, in the end, are powering your EV directly or indirectly. So are you helping the planet breathe more easily? Hell no. You are contributing to more pollution, by allowing US power companies to burn more high sulphur coal, which creates more acid rain and all around pollution. But wait, they are buying carbon credits from more developing nations such as the Cook Islands, Mauritius, and other not yet developing countries that have not yet figured out how they are ultimately getting screwed by the likes of Goldman Sachs and company by receiving a few million dollars in carbon cap money, which will only end up in the pockets of the top officials, who will retreat to their French Chateaus when the sea levels rise.
Bottom line: No electric cars, No fake hybrids, No carbon emission trading. Nobody to date has seriously planned for the hundreds of millions of toxic batteries that will eventually have to be disposed of. Maybe that giant hole that the DOE has dug outside Las Vegas will find some use after all. We already are facing monumental problems with cell phone batteries that for the most part are also Lithium Ion, and it is in those small batteries that the individual consumer can see and feel the inefficiency of charging batteries. The chargers become hot, which represents waste energy, and it takes hours to recharge your portable devices. Now multiply that by the amount of batteries it takes to power a car. Get the picture?
Instead, a big Yes to urban and suburban mass transport, a rebuilding of the railway system, where a trailer van can be transported for a fraction of the cost of transporting it via truck.
The world railway system needs to be rebuilt and electrified for efficient use by the masses, in the exact manner that he Chinese are doing at this moment. Of course it is being done with the same money that they have extracted by making cheap consumer goods for the Western World, through technology transfer. China has surpassed the USA in infrastructure improvements by far, while the USA is lagging more and more behind. Our highways, bridges, ports and rail systems were stopped in their betterment with the Reagan administration, when cutting taxes became the priority of the millennium, and anti property tax crusaders began to crisscross the country, spreading Ayn Rand’s and Milton Friedman’s mantra of anti taxation. ...which 25 years later leads to the closing of libraries that were founded by one of the nation’s great benevolent capitalists, Andrew Carnegie, who realized early on the potential the educated masses would have in the development of this newly settled continent.
So continue in the tradition of Andrew Carnegie, use your brain, buy a small, low polluting vehicle, and use mass transport anytime you can. It will benefit your great grand children greatly. They might have clean air to breathe, without having to go to Oxygen Bars.
Do your part, before this species amuse itself into extinction. Thank you!
Jamie Douglas
Patagonia
