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.

[salvorhardin]

1. My alternative beef fueled vehicle

[cprise]

26. Spend a lot of time in The Lounge?

:evilgrin:

[nickinSTL]

2. 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).

This won't happen. Americans won't give up their cars, and I'm not going to live in some apartment in a city center. The solution HAS to be one that people will accept.

[DenverDem]

4. You will HAVE TO ACCEPT REALITY.

This is the very hubris that has put us where we are. WTF do you suggest?!?!?!?

[nickinSTL]

9. I don't have the answers

I'm just saying that it's unrealistic to expect the majority of people to be willing to make the sacrifices you want.

When the price of gas becomes so high they can't ignore the problem anymore, maybe that will change, but for now, they can still wear blinders. And they will.

I'd much rather find a way to use alternative fuels, at least as a transitional stage. Although if public transportation were more available and user-friendly, it would sure help.

Where I live, it'd take me at least 2 changes of bus/train, and probably an hour and a half to get to work via public transport. Driving, it's more like 35 minutes. Not to mention that I work 2 jobs due to the Bush economy...

[DenverDem]

11. No, it's unrealistic to expect to live an unsustainable lifestyle

and it's time to pull our heads out of our collective ass.

America HAS NO CHOICE and the sacrifices that will have to be made will get increasingly more difficult the longer we live in willfull ignorance about peak oil.

Our decades of arrogant ignorance has resulted in the seemingly impossible situation you and millions of others are facing, but it does not change the reality that soon you will not be able to afford to drive your car to work and the bus ride will seem an acceptable alternative, even if you spend 4 hours a day on the bus.

[nickinSTL]

12. yes

and until people are aware of that, things will continue as they are.

How many people in general are really cognizant of peak oil?

Not many. I only heard of it on DU a couple months ago.

People won't pay attention until it's too late. That's pretty much a certainty.

[mike_c]

7. I live in a small rural town about 10 miles from my workplace...

...in another smallish town on the coast. I bicycle to and from work most days, and my community runs a very convenient shuttle bus service as well.

My point is that it is not a given that a more energy efficient life-style is necessarily a lower quality lifestyle. However, I'd like to echo the comments of others-- unless we come up with a viable replacement for cheap fossil fuels, we simply CANNOT continue what Dick Cheney likes to call "the American way of life."

[DenverDem]

10. You actually have a HIGHER QUALITY LIFESTYLE

because of your responsible energy usage. You are healthier for your bike riding, you have more money because you don't waste it on single passenger car usage and you have the spiritual benefits of responsible living.

God bless you, you are a true futuristic American Patriot!

[TreasonousBastard]

8. You will if you can't afford gas for your car or...

heat for your home. Or there's no water for your your lawn.

It is a fascinating assumption that we can all continue to have just what we want. Resources ARE limited, no matter how much we manage to deny it or try to overcome it.

[DavidMS]

13. I have to disagree...

A massive public transit infracture and surban redevelopment can be done... Its just a matter of framing it properly.

For instance, almost everyone (save members of a certan country club) in the Washington DC metro area are not opposed to the inner purple line, but our idiot govenor doesn't want it and has held up construction so he can continue to use the golf cource.

Its dooable, but will take some time to develop the political will and do the construction. Overall, I feel that progress is occuring, but not as quickly as I would like.

[DenverDem]

3. You are correct, sir.

But that's the kind of truth that greedy, hubristic amerikkkans don't want to hear.

That is the main reason we dumped Carter in 80 to usher in 12 years of petro-fascism. Jimmy tried to tell us the truth about the coming peak oil disaster and we couldn't accept reality and its implications. If we had started changing our system and lifestyles in 77 when he was telling us the truth we would not be in the economic, political and systemic catastrophy we are now in.

[ramapo]

25. 25 wasted years

Look at the data presented in this month's National Geographic on global warming. The up trends really started during the '70s. It just makes me sick to think of the decades wasted as, aside from some improvements in certain air and water qualities, we have gotten into a much deeper and more intractable position.

Carter understood the implications of environmental degradation and the failure to convert to alternative energy. Too bad he was overthrown for the "happy talk" candidate.

Americans didn't want to hear it then and for the most part are no more open to recognizing the need for change now. After all, the SUV is now an American birthright, as is building in the desert, along with the endless sprawl which exasperates the need for oil.

The most sobering thought is that Richard Nixon probably did more for our environment than anybody since. Sure Carter and Clinton protected lots of land but Carter never had the political power of Nixon and Clinton had the lobbyists to keep happy.

Although Nixon's motivation in creating EPA and moving environmental legislation was strictly political, it is the results that count.

Had the warnings of the 1970s been heeded, we might be on a very different path than the one we're on today. Perhaps the hard work would've been behind us. Now we have a much more uncertain future to face. It will take a very strong leader to even start us moving in the right direction.

[david_vincent]

5. That's not bitching, armadillo

I'd say it's an interesting observation. No question that we're heading for a huge crunch, and those who are blindly in love with cars and the oil-supported way of life that we currently enjoy are in for a very rude awakening. Not for lack of information or warning, however; in my experience, there are huge numbers of people who simply think the whole subject is ludicrous. Where I live, there are an awful lot of people whose primary hobby is racing, and who travel around the region and even the country following the races. These same people think that solar energy is a concept that only a drug-crazed imbecile would embrace.
My boss will tell you, with a touch of pride in her voice, that every winter she and her husband burn 1500 gallons of fuel oil AND ten and a half cords of wood. People like this, I think, are heading for the biggest shock of all, since by the time they retire in ten years or so, the price of oil will be out of reach for them. Folks like this will be moving to Florida en masse, I suspect. And they still won't quite understand what happened.

[midnight armadillo]

15. Speaking of houses

My boss will tell you, with a touch of pride in her voice, that every winter she and her husband burn 1500 gallons of fuel oil AND ten and a half cords of wood.

Are they trying to heat their whole yard to 75 deg in January?!?

On NPR the other day there was a story about a house being built. The cost was 3-4% higher than similar ones, but gained 30-40% in energy efficiency. Same with office buildings - they typically have minimal insulation. Daylighting is popular in Europe for office building construction but seems to be ignored here in favor of fluorescent lighting.

Someone noted that lower energy use leads to healthier lives. This is certainly true. I posted a list of green/natural building links the other day, which emphasize the use of local building materials. Heading in this direction would return regional variations to our housing supply. Stick built McMansions are all the rage, but climatically they're not well-suited to most of the country and take too much energy to make them comfortable. Take Florida and its hurricane damage, for example.

[Fovea]

6. Nambe and I agree.

Don't drive, walk or bicycle.
No, it is not the only solution, and yes, it is not practical for folks who drive an hour each way to commute, but only in late 20th C. America would commuting like that seem a good idea.

Big changes, re-urbanisation, the ghettoisation of suburbia, a medieval model of industry, in the sense that most goods are going to be produced closer to home. Globalization rides the chimera of cheap energy and transportation costs. The energy, to remain affordable must de-centralize, and transportation must re-prioritize.

I don't give a crap what "Americans will not tolerate" Give them the choice of living out of a car they can't afford gas to drive, and let's see what Americans can tolerate.

[phantom power]

14. There is a third way: manufactured oils

We can keep our current infrastructure and vehicles, by manufacturing our oil instead of pumping it out of the ground, or generating it from biomass.

It's very feasible to manufacture hydrocarbons (oil or gas). These oils can either be used directly, or can be refined into gasoline if we wish. It will be carbon-neutral, since the carbon can be taken from CO2 in the atmosphere.

It will require construction of many industrial oil-factories, and it will also require new energy sources, probably a lot of nuclear, but we can use as much solar/wind as we can.

If we started soon, we could even use this approach to gradually replace dwindling fossil-fuels, as they become more scarce.

On a completely different subject, I think your rabbit avitar is cool.

[midnight armadillo]

16. About the rabbit...

It's Glenda, the mascot of the Plan 9 operating system from Bell LAbs: www.plan9.com

[phantom power]

17. rock on. Do you use plan-9?

[midnight armadillo]

24. Only a wee bit

I play with it from time to time, but don't have the time to really invest in learning it. Plus the payoff for that investment is a little uncertain...

[rustydad]

21. Absolutely NO

These ideas that we can use new technology to pull ourselves out of the fossil fuel hole we have dug are bogus and deceptive. The reality is that we will have to live with less and less energy or die. Or both. Nature has allowed us to develop into a population that is far beyond in numbers that which a non fossil fuel earth can sustain. A dieoff of 3/4 of the population is almost a given. That said we all die someday in any case. It is the young, the children, that I fear for. Bob

[phantom power]

23. Absolutely Yes!

If you allow nuclear power, it can be done. Personally, I think using nuclear power is worth it to prevent the collapse you are speaking of.

[cprise]

18. Public transportation

...is not a long-term solution for sprawling suburbs; It is a PITA getting to and from bus/rail stops. Communities need to start looking at zoning special areas for re-development into denser, pedestrian-oriented districts to see what is possible; The first candidates should be sprawl areas that have frequent rail service. The U.S. will have to deal with population density as an efficiency issue sooner or later.

That said, there is no "switching" involved with biofuels. They ought to be used NOW in whatever proportions we can safely manage in order to offset CO2 emissions. And we will need to do this while working on other energy options, whether its new biofuel tech. or something more exotic.

[TO Kid]

19. Zoning caused the problems in the first place

Just take a look at the older parts of any town- you see neighbourhoods with offices, stores, bars, houses and light manufacturing within a few blocks of each other. Then check out the 'burbs and what do you find? Vast tracts of housing without so much as a newspaper box within walking distance, wide arterial roads with self-serve gas bars, shopping malls situated in the centre of parking lots the size of Saskatchewan and apartment blocks with enormous empty spaces between them. Why did this happen? Because the old towns were built without the benefit of urban planners who believe they know the One Best Way for the rest of us to live. To planners it's just a game of lines on a map; they rarely live in the hellholes they design.

Zoning is all well and good when there are genuine health and safety concerns (I sure wouldn't live next to an oil refinery), but when density rules make it impossible to walk to a neighbour's home and land use policy means getting to the nearest grocer takes longer than a deep-space mission, I'd say it is now doing more harm than good.

[cprise]

22. That's an example of zoning produced by black and white thinking

Residences over HERE, Food service over THERE, offices in the Office Park, etc.

Zoning blocks or districts as "mixed use" with a 3 or 4-story requirement and ground-level shops would do a lot of good in getting the US to try human-scale communities again.


If you're so passionate about preventing hellholes, then I emplore you to read the book associated with this website:

http://www.carfree.com/district.html

http://www.carfree.com/phasing.html

[happyslug]

20. Some past threads on this and related subjects

Peak Oil - How will we continue agriculture? Steam Tractors:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=5570

Bottom of the barrel - The world is running out of oil.:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=3110#3482

Why we can not give up the Automobile:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=1539#1602

Why Nuclear power will NOT solve the problem:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=6071