My beef with alternative fuel vehicles

[midnight armadillo]

After reading the Washington Monthly article on ethanol, I figure it's time to air my thoughts on the whole subject of alternative fuel for vehicles.

The single biggest problem with discussions of ethanol/biodiesel/dimethyl ether (hi NNadir! ;-))/hydrogen is that it always seems to revolve around replacing our current vehicles with more efficient versions using the new fuels.

This is really besides the point. It does not appear possible to generate enough renewable fuels to run our current car-intensive lifestyle. The only way the switch to non-petro fuels will work is with a massive buildout of public transportation and the concentration of living and work areas to reduce commuting distances (and encourage bicycles). I think that discussions of future transportation should focus on where we'll put all the rail lines and subways, not what sort of gunk we dump into cars to keep 'em running.

The same argument follows through with switching to renewable energy sources for electricity generation. Again, people discuss how much land area we'd need for wind, number of nuke plants, etc to replace all our coal plants, and then complain that sun and wind aren't consistent. Heavy reliance on renewable energy will necessitate drastic lifestyle changes, such as much more efficient homes (that use daylighting, passive solar, etc) along with living with a variation in the amount of energy available on a given day. People who live off the grid already do this - with a long stretch of calm cloudy days you don't fire up the power tools much in order to conserve, etc.

Ok, enough bitching.