Rethinking personal transportation

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Bio-fuel nor electric vehicles can help us continue the way things are today. The car, whether gasoline, diesel, or even electric, does not have a future.

Britain would be, in theory, well and ideally placed as regards to the production and use of bio-diesel with public transport, that is to say buses, and delivery and public service vehicles considering the number of Fish and Chips Shops throughout the country that have masses of waste cooking oil to dispose off on a daily basis which could be easily converted.

One can but wonder how many gallons or even tons per day are actually discarded around the country.

However, bio-fuel, be this kind of diesel or ethanol cannot sustain the amount of personal motoring in Britain and in the rest of the world and neither can electric vehicles.

It will, therefore, be necessary that we reconsidered our ways and that we ALL woke up to this fact including and especially those greenies that keep advocating bio-fuels and electric vehicles instead of a real change; a change from the car, of whatever kind, to a real sustainable alternative.

Personal motoring is very much yesterday and has had its day. Like one of the people said in the movie documentary “The Power of Community”, the car was but a blip in the history of mankind and we need to go back to the ways and methods we used to use before motoring became cheap and was regarded as a right for all, a human right almost.

We still have one of the best means of personal transportation that does not rely on either an engine or animal power – aside from walking but it is equally human-powered – and that is the humble bicycle, it burns calories instead of fossil fuel and keeps you fit.

The electric car has be touted, even by many greenies, as the answer to the internal combustion engine motorcar but it is doubtful as to whether, as far as purchase cost, it will ever be truly affordable by the masses. The production of such high-tech vehicles and their batteries also use up valuable resources, much better employed elsewhere, and that entirely aside from the pollution the mining for those rare earths and metals causes.

The mining for and production of gold in many places is almost as destructive as the Canadian tar sands and the same is true as regards to the extraction of rare earths and other components required to make electric cars. This make electric vehicles as unsustainable as ordinary motorcars, maybe even more so.

The humble bicycle is a proven technology, uses steel or aluminium for frames and wheel rims, etc., the metal for which can come from recycled sources and can be recycled again at the end of life almost ad infinitum.

A cared for bicycle, however, has a fairly long lifespan and some bikes of 60 or more years ago are still with us today and still perform as well as they day they were made.

We must stop and think and reconsider our options for personal transportation which, admittedly, are not great without the personal motorcar and leave but a few, most of them powered by self.

Looking at the electric car, aside from not being carbon neutral at all, it will also be costly. Costly to buy in the first place and costly to run as we all know that the batteries have a limited recharge cycle and thus lifespan and will need replacing every couple of years and that to the tune of about two-thirds of the price of a new car.

When industry, governments and environmentalists sing the praises of electric vehicles in how they will reduce CO2 emissions the CO2 and other pollutants emitted in the production of the cars and their batteries almost never enter the equation.

Industry is interested in the continuation of motoring and if people can be made to believe that electric vehicles will make for a clean Planet they are prepared to perpetuate this myth.

Governments are not prepared to tell the people the truth for fear of a backlash as people have come to believe that owning and driving a car or even three is their G-d-given and even human right.

And many environmentalists themselves – the very same that keep jetting off to all those many UN and other conferences in far flung countries – also want to keep the status quo of personal motoring and thus are on the bandwagon unquestioning.

However, the fact of the matter is that electric cars are as bad for the environment as are their ICE counterparts only that the emissions and environmental destruction happens elsewhere.

To say that the motorcar has served us well one definitely can not. The horse and the bicycle on the other hand have and will do so again.

Regardless of what the powers-that-be, the oil- and the car industry are trying to tell us and our governments cheap oil is coming to an end – in fact, it has done so already – and motoring for everyone is about to rung into a very solid rock face.

And this crash is going to be very much a shock to the system of people who believe that the current way of life of motoring will go on for ever.

The ever escalating – and doesn't it just – cost of fuel in Britain has already led to an increase in cycling including and especially for commuting but it is still nowhere close to where it is in other European countries and still miles away from the Netherlands and Denmark.

In the movie documentary “The Power of Community”, which is about Cuba's enforced peak oil after the “collapse” of the Soviet Union and how this Caribbean island dealt with the aftermath, one scientist expressed the truth plainly when he said that the motorcar has just been a blip in the history of mankind and that we have to return to other ways of doing things. And that indeed we must, and not only because we are running out of (cheap) oil, but also and especially for the sake of the Planet (and not just in regards to climate change).

We have to find an alternative to motoring as far as personal transportation (for the masses) is concerned and neither the electric car not ICE cars on bio-fuel will cut it here. But there is no need to reinvent the wheel. That alternative already exists. It is cheap and reliable, can be maintained with a little skill and tools by the user, and it is none other than the humble bicycle and the simpler the better.

Believing that we can carry on motoring ad infinitum is but an illusion and the sooner we woke up from this dream the better.

The future of personal transportation (for the masses) is human-powered and the very same that our grandparents and their parents used and not electric or bio-fuel and has been a reliable technology ever since Forestry Superintendent Karl Dreis invented it and Pierre Michaux improved upon it by adding pedals (and then the chain drive) and the rest, as they say, is history.

While the horse (and carriage) is also an alternative, and the Hanson Cab may make a comeback in the cities, it is not a practical alternative for everyone and, in addition, the bicycle is much cheaper to buy and does not require feeding, watering, vets bills, etc.

© 2013

Britain attempts to push for leading position on green transport

by Michael Smith

A high powered meeting of industry experts, academics and policy makers was held in London in October 2008 to discuss how to get the mass market production of electric vehicles and other low carbon transport properly started.

Delegates from more than 15 countries came together in London to discuss the technological challenges, barriers and opportunities that could be created from the low carbon and electric vehicle market.

This meeting, arranged by the UK government, was a follow up to the Prime Minister's announcement made earlier this year that he wants to see Britain at the forefront of the development of green transport.

Business Minister, Ian Pearson, said that currently less than 0.1% of the UK's 26 million cars are electric. He added that the government is committed to bring lower carbon vehicles to Britain's roads as soon as possible. For that, he said, we need to act now to ensure that the UK is at the forefront of this new industry.

Continuing he said that the UK's automotive sector has a global reputation for research and development, design engineering and manufacturing. The development of electric vehicle technology is an opportunity for the UK to take the lead and, given the current state of the global economy, we need to seize that opportunity now.

What I would like to know, and it is a shame that I could not ask that question directly, is why we keep harping on about cars, cars and cars again. While electric cars are fine they cannot meet the needs for proper green transport.

The only way we will ever see Britain in the forefront of green transport is when the UK finally gets its act together on cheap – and I do mean cheap – and reliable – and I also stress that word – public transport, especially the railroads, whether local, commuter or long distance. It does not make sense when a ticket from South West of London to Birmingham in peak time is over £200 return when flying would have cost less than £70.

It is NOT electric cars that we need but a proper green transport infrastructure that makes the use of public transport, from rail, over metro to bus, cheap, reliable and safe, and which also have provisions for completely linked cycle routes, as are found in other countries of Europe, such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany; cycle routes that are physically separated from the motor vehicle traffic.

It would appear that the only thing that they were really interested in this gabfest was the car, and this is rather a shame.

We should rather promote an alternative to the car, whether or not it is electric shall not be to discussion here.

The people of this country are getting obese, and are soon catching up on their American cousins, because all they do is drive to work and to the stores by car. They then sit in the office and then get back by car and sit in front of the goggle box or the computer.

This country must get on its bike or walk. It does not make sense to use the car to go to the stores to get the newspaper – around a mile or so away – or to the shops in general, whether this be by using an electric or an ICE car.

What this country must do is to actually invest in alternative transport, starting with the railroads and then cycling, rather than more roads and more cars, regardless as to whether those cars are electric or not.

But, obviously, the motor industry still is a formidable lobby, unlike the bicycle industry or the railroads, and too many of the sheeple also cannot even think of not driving a car.

So, let's hear it for the bicycle and the train!

© M Smith (Veshengro), November 2008
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Rising Fuel Prices... Who is behind it?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Yes, I asked who and not what...

What we are seeing here, in my opinion, is nothing but a repeat of the Oil Crisis in the 1970's, the one that never was, only with different means.

This is another way for the governments continue the anti-car agenda?

While I cannot prove this, obviously, for even the powers that be do not leave a trail of evidence in this matter, it has, however, all the hallmarks of yet, like the Oil Crisis of the 1970's, another attempt of people control.

The “Oil Crisis” in the 1970's, the one that was about as real as Alice in Wonderland, happened just a very short time, something like a week or so, after the great speech by Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State of the USA, in which he stated, and I paraphrase “if you want to control nations you have to (be able to) control fuel, and if you want to (be able to) control people you have to control food (and water)”.

If you want to be able to control, however, where people live and work you have to control fuel and have to get them off their personal means of transport, namely the motorcar.

Enter the global warming myth.

The fact is that the powers that be have been trying to get us out of cars – and I am saying this while I am not even a car owner and/or driver but a cyclist. First they try to scare us with “global warming” being the result, so they claim, and they use all manner of science and scientists to back this up, of car emissions primarily and, as this does not seem to work we now – surprise – have oil prices going through the roof.

High prices may just be one way that might stop people using their cars (as much) and where the global warming threat has not worked the bite in the pocketbook will more likely work.

In addition the fuel costs are driving up the other household costs, be this energy or food and this has a knock-on effect on how much people can spend on fuel.

I know that I am a cynic when it comes to this getting people out of cars agenda of the governments, not only that of the UK. This seems to be leading all the way back to whoever really runs the (Western) world.

Personally, I do think that we do use cars far too much and far too unnecessarily for does one really have to jump into the car to go to the newsagents for a paper – then again do you really have to buy a paper still? - or to the shops, which are less that five or ten minutes walk away? I do not think so.

Does little Johnny or little Jenny, whose school is only a few minutes walk away from their homes, have to be driven to school by Mom (or Dad) and that, more often than not, in a gas-guzzling SUV? Certainly not and it is also no wonder that little Johnny and little Jenny look like little beaches whales. Thinking of that: I have to apologize as that is an insult – to whales.

There are so many other example of unnecessary car use that could be given, where walking, cycling or the use of mass transit of one way or the other would be the answer and often also much cheaper (though with the costs of British rail fares this is not so in many cases).

However, while I am all for getting out of the car (more) I am against forcing people out of their cars by such covert backhanded operations, such as fuel price hikes or supposed oil shortages as the earlier cited “Oil Crisis” in the 1970's or the claim that the climate change that our Planet is experiencing is the result of car emissions.

What this appears to me is nothing but yet another blatant attempt of people control. An attempt to see what it will take for people to “abandon” the use of their cars. It is obvious that the threat of global warming, now rephrased to “climate change”, a much more correct term than “global warming”, as the actual warming of the Earth has stopped and even the head of the IPCC has to admit that this is so and that the temperature has not risen since about the year 2000 and is on a plateau currently without any signs of rising, not even fractionally, has not – at least not as yet – worked people away from their car use.

As, as it would appear there is a timetable to the “getting people out of their personal cars” agenda, the time seems to be getting close and a new set of guns had to be rolled out; enter “oil shortage” and “fuel price hike”.

Now let's see what is next?

I shall keep watching and analyzing and reporting.

© M Smith (Veshengro), May 2008