At the risk of dating myself, I distinctly remember from science class 25 years ago reading about the coming of electric cars. So where are they?
For that matter, where are any legitimate, affordable alternatives to the gas guzzling, carbon producing, global warming version of our beloved automobile? I’m not buying for a second that it’s technologically overwhelming to phase out vehicles that burn oil-based fuels (gasoline and diesel for this discussion). No, not when we’re busily swapping our old boob tubes for slick new HD T.V.’s.
We’re still driving gas-powered vehicles because of politics and corporate profits. Think of the technological innovations over the last 25 years.
I’m typing this editorial on a laptop computer that 25 years ago would have seemed at home only on an episode of The Jetson’s. I’ll send it to TheBayNet.com’s editor via the Internet; a concept that, in 1983, would have more likely received puzzled facial contortions than can-do exuberance.
Heck, we cracked the code on human DNA and may have the ability to clone ourselves (that should make Mother Earth quake). And I haven’t yet mentioned that device that serves as our fifth limb and is now far too narrowly defined as a cell phone.
So don’t tell me we can’t figure out how to power a vehicle with something other than gasoline. That should feel like a slap in the face to all Americans. We identify, innovate, engineer and conquer challenges. So let’s put gasoline powered cars in the crosshairs.
The internal combustion engine, its combustion accomplished via gasoline, might go down in history as one of our worst inventions. That’s unfortunate and is more a result of our unwillingness to progress the technology than of the technology’s harmful by-product (greenhouse gases).
What other product has changed so little in the last 100+ years? My dad owns a 1958 Chevrolet Biscayne. Admittedly, when you pop the hood you feel like you’re stepping back in time. But strip away the bells and whistles of our modern rolling living rooms and you’ll still find such common components as valve covers, spark plugs and a radiator. More importantly, that 50-year old Biscayne refuels at the local Wawa just like a brand spanking new car off the lot in Everywhere, U.S.A.
Did you know the 1908 Model T Ford got a cool 25 miles per gallon? That’s competitive 100 years later! Oh sure, today’s vehicles are more powerful and comfortable, but you get the point. In about a dozen years, I’ve gone from saving files to a 1.44MB floppy disk to a 2 GB thumb drive. Yet in a century, our automobiles are getting basically the same miles per gallon? People, something is amiss.
To say our leaders have been “asleep at the wheel” would be kind. More poignantly, the purchased political power of oil companies and automobile manufactures has ensured the continuance of the profitable status quo to the long-term detriment of earth and its most advanced inhabitants (or so we fancy ourselves). For decades our nation’s (and world’s) leaders have ignored a “should do”. Now it has become a “must do”. In addition to broader changes in how we power the world, we must find an alternative to gasoline. Sadly, a pending global environmental crisis alone wasn’t enough to prompt change; it required economic discomfort. Inarguably a, and perhaps the, catalyst to curing (or at least seeking treatment for) our addiction to gasoline is a measurable impact on the global economy. At $3.20/gallon, and with a myriad of other disturbing examples of climate change, it is difficult to fill our tanks without at least pondering the great challenge before us. To that I say, w