A cleaner world vision beyond Triple A battery powered transportation

I am tired of the electro fascists who insist that the only option for personal transportation is an electric vehicle. To them it is entirely logical to legislate the 260 million cars and trucks off the roads of America in favor of the one million electro cars now on those same roads.

Don't get me wrong, electric cars are nice, especially in areas where there is an overabundance of clean free electricity needed to keep them going. But the impact of plugging 260 million cars into the existing US grid at the same time for an up eight hour recharge cannot be measured in the amount of upgrading the grid will have to spend at our expense. Washington state already makes those who bought hybrids  pay a $75 licensing fee to offset the plug in expenses, a clear admission that those of us who bought Prius are subsidizing the Leaf blowers.

An yet there are alternatives available and in the technical pipelines The solutions we should be looking at are how are we going to mix the various options we already have so that we actually improve the balance in the use of fuels to minimize that actual damage being done to the environment, regardless of where that environment is. If, in the pursuit of the rare metals required for EV batteries we poison the soils at the extraction site, then we may have to curtail the mining of those metals.

If, in order to charge the millions of new vehicles we increase our dependence on hydro-power and cause salmon to miss their spawning cycles because the waters around the dams are too warm, then we need to address that issue. I am looking into running ethanol through diesel engines in order to curtail the emissions with a bio-based substitute, the diesel engine is just starting its development stage of improvement, just as the four cycle engine went through and has reached a very high level of efficiency. We may find that one of the most efficient sources of fuels will be locally produced for a specific demographic and that we are going to see some amazing multifuel engines with minor tweaks coming down the pike.

I just get a little irritated at the ban the gas, burn the trucks movements that are willing to bet every mile we need to travel on one source of energy that is in itself not clean in the least since the source of power relies for the most part on old fashioned generating stations of some sort. Those generators range from Solar power, which covers vast acreage of land better suited for agriculture, Nuclear, which is in itself clean, but fraught with danger that Chernobyl proved and Three Mile Island disproved.

Clearly we can do better, and the race to bio-power is heartening because when you have that amount of flexibility you can start adapting your fuel to your fuel's use. If you are running a smaller diesel powered launch in and around mussel beds where the contamination factor translates directly into taste at the dinner table, then biodiesel in small and medium sized coastal fishing fleets may be mandated and the Monterey Bay, which is a marine sanctuary rich in a diverse ecology encompassing all manner of life forms, from giant kelp to humpback whales and sea otters galore. That scenario is not unique to California, it is a reality in such places as Lorient, France, the Bay of Mexico with the Louisiana bayous, Thailand's huge fishing industry and the frozen Canadian bay of Fundy. 

One hesitates to use the expression Boutique Fuels, but certainly if not boutique at the very least tailor made fuels, adapted and adaptable to cater to very specific situations, mitigating very specific damage from local industry, increased shipping and the need for pristine air and beaches for the tourist trade.

Speaking of trade, there has always been a symbiotic relationship between the farmer and transportation, never more so than now when wars, trade wars, availability and demand make it imperative that cargos of tons of wheat must go by train, boat or truck from one part of the world to the other for consumers, for transformation for almost anything the modern bio-alchemists can dream up and the new Nicholas Flamels go way beyond the Philosopher Stones of Medieval scientists and transform simple sugars into almost anything the heart may desire.

Now we enter the world of big business with names as old as the Hanseatic league, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland supported by billions of acres of farmland as diverse as the jatropha trees of India and the sugar beets of Belgium all contributing their toil to advancing and bettering the lives of people who love too fa from production and can aspire to transmutations and shifting molecules of oxygen and Hydrogen and faint memories of high school chemistry classes remind us that the genius is not in discovery but application of those arcane bits of knowledge. 

Fossil fuels are the simplest forms of energy, they are also the dirtiest and most vulnerable to manipulation. The bio-economy has no closed borders,  no restrictions and no limits. It can be implanted anywhere, it can provide jobs at every level and it can be adapted. It is time to open our vision beyong triple A powered cars and start building the next infrastructure that we clearly require.