By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The United States continues unabated to promote private car travel and to invest heavily in it and the infrastructure for it rather than the promotion of any kind of public transportation.
This is the greatest folly but not surprising seeing that the US government is still in bed with the oil industry and to a great degree in fact is the oil industry. Despite the fact that a new man is at the helm since about two years and the Bushes are no longer in the driving seat it is business as usual.
Donald Trump even goes as far as saying that the USA has the right to – forcibly, if need be – take unto itself all the oil in Iraq up to and exceeding the value of the war that has been fought to “liberate” the country from Saddam Hussein. He just forgets that the war was fought for the oil in the first place and that the likes of Haliburton are already syphoning off the oil without paying the Iraqi government.
Donald Trump went as fas as suggesting that if the Iraqis are not willing to give the US the oil for free then it would have to be gotten by force, to the tune of the money that the US has invested in the war to free them from Saddam Hussein.
It is all about oil and Libya is the very same and that is why NATO – the US standing in the background this time though egging NATO on – is going to, basically, go for a regime change there. If it would be about human rights then we should equally intervene in Rhodesia – now called Zimbabwe – and in Syria, and other states.
But there is no oil in Zimbabwe and there is no oil, not much anymore, in Yemen, non in Syria, and therefore no intervention. It is as simple as that.
People are being killed on all sides because of our addition to oil, to wanting to drive bigger cars and more of them. Does a family of four really need two or three cars even? Do we really have to live hundreds of miles away from our jobs? Personally, I do not think so, and it is also not sustainable.
The age of the (personal) motorcar is history or, as one of the Cuban scientists in the movie “The Power of Community” commented, the motorcar is going to be a blip in the annals of human history, one minute it was here the next minute it was gone.
The very fact that the internal combustion engine, however nice it may be or may have been, as regards too enabling us to get far afield, is not sustainable as regards to fuels is just one factor here.
But this is something that does not seem to be getting into the heads of those that sit in Washington, DC, not into the heads of most of those that sit in the Houses of Parliament in London.
The great majority of the public also cannot – nor do they want to – envisage life without the motorcar and when they come to realize that the time of oil may be coming to an end they come out with “oh, by that time we will be driving electric cars and then there is always biofuel.”
The electric car is not going to be affordable for the masses any time soon if ever, for we must consider that with oil getting more expensive we may have a problem as to cost of manufacture of the electric car and, the way I see it, prices more than likely will be going up rather than coming down.
Biofuels we simply cannot afford and that for a number of reasons. One of those is that biofuels, or better the basic materials from which they are made, maize and other plants, compete with food crops, water, fertilizers, etc. The second reason being that scientists have found in studiers that the emissions, including CO2, are higher from most biofuels than they are from petroleum-based fuels. Biodiesel also has a much, much higher nano particle emission than does “ordinary” diesel, and it is those minute particles in diesel that are a health hazard to humans and a causal agent of asthma.
Biofuels to me, as to a fair number of experts, appear to be a case of “from the frying pan into the fire” and it would be best we rethought this issue also and that pronto.
We must wean ourselves off the infernal combustion engine, in whatever form, and of oil of whatever form. Gas we can have, yes, in the form of natural gas, made by ourselves through the process of digestion of biomatter and sewage and with that we can power electricity generating plants on a local level and cook.
As to transportation, in the main, methinks, that we will need to look again at human power in the form of walking, cycling, etc., and the use of animal draft. While this make me sound like a Luddite, I know, I am not one though. I am, on the other hand, a realists and have come to the realization that the time of private car travel is gone.
Public transportation also is a little of a problem with the lack of oil, but can be overcome by other ways, such as trains run on methane and even buses, coaches, and such like, and it should be possible to make enough of that gas for our needs. Guess we could always harness a few cows.
We do need to think of other ways of transportation and, in all honesty, despite the fact that the powers that be in Washington, DC, have not as yet understood – because of their involvement in, and support by, the oil industry the age of private car travel is over. It is history, and also no electric car is going to solve that, not is biofuel.
Rethink...
© 2011
