I admit, I am a bit surprised to see this in a U.S. newspaper, it is almost blasphemous. Fewer cars would aid nature even more than cleaner cars The US, and unfortunately the rest of the world seems to be following our lead, has gone too far in embracing the car at the expense of all other forms of transportation.
I for one am tired of people like Al Gore during the last election, pushing these cleaner cars while ignoring the real issue. It reminds me of one of the Lone Gunman episodes where someone invented a car that ran on water. Sounds like a good idea, but that would cause more and more cars to be made and bought, making things much worse than they already are.
I do not want to deny anyone the right to the car of their choice, as long as other peoples transportation choices are given the same respect and rights granted to motorists.
The main problems of being totally dependent on cars as I see it are:
Cars, insurance, gas, general upkeep etc. are very expensive. I personally would like to use all that money for other things, like save for the future, travel etc.
In some areas, traffic and congestion are constant problems. Even on the weekends or late in the evening you are liable to be stuck in traffic and are forced to waste time and gas.
Everything is built with the car in mind so anyone doing anything else is inconvenience or totally ignored.
To go anywhere you have to drive. I would like to see cars banned in some areas. Downtowns for example. Look at all the valuable real estate wasted for parking garages and lots. There is no reason why one can’t park in a remote lot, take a tram to downtown and be able to safely walk around.
Oil is too valuable a resource to waste burning up just so we can go to the store for more Chunky Monkey ice cream.
It would be good to cut our reliance on foriegn oil.
Part of the reason US is so fat is because we drive everywhere.
People insulated in their cars seem to be much more aggressive than they would be outside of their “metal safety cage.”
If you lose the right or ability to drive, in most areas you are pretty much stuck. I think, for example, seniors who are unable to drive would be less resistant to giving up there car if we had decent, reliable public transportation.
I know I am more easily annoyed or stressed when I am stuck in traffic or see someone do something stupid while driving than when I am on my bike.
The biggest problem with hydrogen as a fuel is that it has to be mass produced. And most presently workable methods of doing so require tons of power… which presumably we’ll generate by massive increase in waste generating plants (maybe even oil burning plants!) That could still be better for the environment (easier and cheaper to control plant waste than car exhaust), but it’s still a considerable wrinkle.
Yeah, that’s the thing. Gasoline pretty much has to be made out of petroleum, but the electrical power that turns water into hygrogen can be generated by any power source.
While hydrogen cars won’t fix the problems with congestion, or “road rage” or towns being built for cars, it could end dependance on oil for gasoline, and we could use the oil for other things like plastics. Also, hydrogen power can be very clean, if it is produced by clean power sources (solar, wind, hydro, but I doubt these sources could provide enough hydrogen to replace gasoline) or semi-clean sources like nuclear, where all the waste is contained. One proposal I have heard is to set ~200 CANDU nuclear reactors around the Yucca Mountain waste desposal site, and have them recycle the incoming waste into power to create all the hydrogen needed to replace gasoline. This greatly reduces the total volume of waste that has to be burried as well. Of course, I doubt this will happen any time soon due to political reasons.
—and we could use the oil for other things like plastics.—
Finally! We can make more plastic!
—Also, hydrogen power can be very clean, if it is produced by clean power sources (solar, wind, hydro, but I doubt these sources could provide enough hydrogen to replace gasoline) or semi-clean sources like nuclear, where all the waste is contained.—
Which is why touting hydroelectric cars as a move for environmentalism… then slashing funding for clean power sources (and indeed everything but oil) is so odd.
Nuclear is sort of an open question. It would be great if it wasn’t so dangerous. I’m still not so comfortable about having refined nuclear material concentrated in one area, easy to bomb in a war or terrorist attack and spew into the atmosphere. And the waste, including transport, is still no small problem. But, it isn’t going to run out as a source of fuel anytime soon.
I don’t know about it’s cost effectiveness compared to other sources though: does it cost more or less than a coal generator of similar power, or more or less than other sorts of power plants??
Stop me if I’m wrong, but isn’t oil the problem? Couldn’t we build a huge array of nuclear power facilities near oceans/rivers, suck up water, split it, and pipe the hydrogen whereever we want it to go? And then massively harden the nuke plants to prevent damaging attack? And wasn’t that the idea in the first place?
A take on the problem that could be put into effect almost immediately - while we wait for these other solutions to become plausible (you can’t tear down and rebuild LA for pedestrian/mass transport in two days) - would be for car manufacturers to stop marketing SUVs and muscle cars and other gas guzzlers and make cheap, small, fuel efficient vehicles … and then market them in a way that makes the masses want to buy them.
Sure, slashing alternative energy ideas is anti-environment. Sure fewer cars and more bike-riding and mass transit and car pooling would be better for the environment.
But do you really think that poor emissions keep many people out of cars and that more environmnetally freindly vehicles would free up people from their inhibitions about driving them?
BTW, Britain’s strategy plan is to slowly phase out aging nuclear plants and bring on-line a combination of wind, wave, tidal and other renewable sources. How realistic this is may be another question.
Those microwave-power-generating satellites would all have to be in geostationary orbit. There are only so many geostationary orbital “slots” available. How many of those microwave-power-generating satellites would it take to power a city the size of, say, Los Angeles?
In addition to the problems listed in the OP, let’s not forget auto accidents. Is the convenience of personal transport worth 40,000 lives a year? And that’s just in the US. Fuel efficient cars will not solve this problem.
We really should be spending more money on public transport and other alternative transport systems rather than fuel-efficient cars. Trains and buses are far more fuel-efficient and safer than automobiles.
It is the space to earth energy transfer satellites that have to be in geostationary orbit-although there are other configurations possible…
the collector satellites can be elsewhere- perhaps the L1 or L2 lagrange points or similar… or on the moon… and beam their collected energy to the transfer satellites.
The worst problem to me with this arrangement, apart from the cost, is the possible use of such high energy transfer as a weapon. They are likely to be made illegal, if they aren’t already, because they could count as weapons in space.
The “slots” are only for telecommunications satellites broadcasting on the same frequency. Since the receiving antenna on earth has a limited angular resolution, you have to space the satellites far enough so you can pick out one signal. A solar power satellite would not have this problem - it would probably use a different frequency than telecommunications satellites, and its beam would be tightly collimated. Also, there’s no limit to how large each solar power satellite can be, so you just need three very large ones to power the entire planet. (So that at least one will be visible from any part of the world.)
Mind you, solar power satellites are a long way from becoming practical, and it’s possible that it never will. But not for the reasons you stated. Launch cost is the big issue. Cost of solar panels is another.
I’ve always thought that microwave power satellites were a bad idea. They just don’t make sense to me. The only reason to have them is to A) allow them to be in the sun 24 hours a day, and B) allow them to collect power outside of the atmosphere, where the solar flux is greater.
The ultimate purpose of both of those goals is to lower the cost per megawatt of electricity. But think about what we need to achieve that - launching huge satellites into geostationary orbit, setting up huge microwave collector farms on the ground, attenuation losses from beaming the power back through the atmosphere from 24,000 miles away, maintenance and replacement of satellites, etc.
I fail to see how that will provide cheap power. Especially since the photovoltaic cells themselves are still too expensive to do it, and because they become pitted and lose their ability to generate power fairly rapidly and have a short lifespan. The solar panels on MIR, for instance, we only generating a fraction of the power they originally did because of degredation.
It seems to me that it would be far more cost-effective to simply quadruple the size of your collector farm on the earth than to go to all the trouble of beaming power back from space. And we don’t build collector farms like that now because photovoltaic cells are still one of the most expensive ways there are to generate electricity.
I don’t know about the rest of the country, but for Manhattan, if the implicit subsidy for rush hour drivers into the city were eliminated, it would solve lots of traffic & pollution problems. Tolls need to be raised on the Hudson River crossings until the congestion eases; that would indicate that supply and demand are back in balance. And the Port Authority would make more money while having to spend less on maintenance from wear and tear.
Makes too much sense though. I’ve written to them about this, and they’re really not interested.
Hear hear! I already ride a tricycle. I recently started a thread about using HPVs which lists some other human-powered options.
Someone mentioned the Segway but I don’t see it as a huge improvement. It’s still a powered personal vehicle, and it doesn’t have enough range for most people’s commuting needs.
