Hybrids, Biofuels and Other False Idols

[Ming]

Interesting, if somewhat extreme, take on alternative transportation.

Hybrids, Biofuels and Other False Idols
2/14/07

What's Being Left Out of Solutions to Fossil Fuel?
By Don Fitz
CounterPunch
Infoshop News



Everyone from the Republicans to Democrats to major environmental groups are singing hosannas to biofuels and hybrid cars as the salvation from peak oil and global warming. Will trusting corporations to manufacture environmentally friendly cars make a dent in the world's ecological crises? Or could the "solutions" actually be making the problem worse?

The planned obsolescence and massive production of consumer objects in the overdeveloped countries is responsible for catastrophic climate change and species extinction. The question which we obviously need to address is how to improve the quality of life while decreasing the quantity of useless junk and not throwing anyone out of work. But unflinching loyalty to a growth economy prevents corporate environmentalists from searching for serious transportation options.

Cars are a huge problem, both for global warming and the exhaustion of oil reserves. With less than 5% of the world's population, the US produces 25% of carbon emissions. Transportation causes a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.

The wastefulness of the automobile is staggering. Roughly 10% of the chemical energy of gasoline makes wheels turn around. Amory Lovins computes that, with a 10% efficient car with a driver, passenger and luggage weighing 300 pounds (which is about 10% of the car weight), only 1% of the fuel's energy actually moves what needs to be moved.

There is an unending stream of stories in the corporate media that biofuels and hybrid cars are the answer. Biofuels promise to reduce oil use and decrease pollution by making fuel from corn and soy instead of petroleum. By generating their own electricity, hybrid cars use less gasoline and therefore emit fewer greenhouse gases.

Techno-fantasies fixate on one portion of transportation: the use of fuel to make a machine go. In reality, transportation is a system for getting around. That system requires energy for manufacture and disposal of machines, land use for moving and storing the things that move, related impacts of moving machines, and an ideology that weaves transportation into a society.

The horror of the car

Let's look at seven dimensions of the destructiveness of gasoline-powered cars.

1. Manufacture. According to Richard Heinberg, "more than half of the energy consumption attributable to each vehicle on the road occurs in the manufacturing process." Thus, unless an alternative approach to transportation significantly reduces manufacturing, it is not even addressing half the problem.

2. Operation. Driving cars results in huge releases of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas that causes global warming. Myopic views of transportation can't see beyond the driving phase.

3. Disposal. Car batteries have one of the widest arrays of toxic chemicals short of a nuclear dump. Their poisoning of countless generations is virtually ignored by automobile apologists.

4. Land use for roads. Roads break up neighborhoods, farms and animal habitat and contribute directly to global warming. Paved surfaces convert sunlight to heat and do not convert sunlight to photosynthesis as do the plants they eliminate.

5. Land use for storage. What could be uglier and ruin more urban areas than parking lots? Vast expanses of parking lots contribute to "urban warming," which makes cities warmer than the surrounding countryside.

The problem is not just parking lots at shopping centers, work, school, church, hospitals and sporting events - we have our own little parking lots at home. Most likely, driveways for home garages average even higher ratios of access-to-destination paving than do business parking lots. The millions of little driveways to home parking garages comprise an extremely inefficient use of land and probably contribute to urban warming.

6. Other effects. Negative effects from cars which are even less likely to make it into official equations include horrible pollution from burning off ("flaring") unwanted gas from pipelines in Nigeria and elsewhere and over a million animals a year killed on US highways annually. Health effects from toxic automobile emissions could fill many volumes (and probably have).

Since hybrids average $3000 more than comparable cars, it is reasonable to ask if they require more energy to manufacture. Maybe not, because the $3000 could include initial costs for research and development. But a much higher cost to manufacture could be hidden by government subsidies to help hybrids gain a share of the market. There is a real possibility that hybrids transfer energy from the driving portion of their use-cycle to the manufacturing phase.

There is no reason to believe that hybrids offer any advantage over conventional cars in terms of energy used for disposal, land used for roads or parking lots or road kill. The amount of fuel needed for driving is a real issue and no one doubts hybrids excel in this area. The hybrid with the best fuel economy is the Honda Insight, which Consumer Reports rates at 51 mpg. To get this fuel savings, the Insight is a two-seater.

This leads to the question: If the greatest fuel saving in a hybrid comes from reducing the number of passengers, why not reduce it again from 2 to 1 and ride a motorcycle? Are there advantages of hybrids that have not been available for decades via motorcycles?

There is good reason for suspecting that motorcycles might have less total negative effect than hybrids. Being smaller, they certainly require less energy for manufacture and disposal than any car. Though they require road space, a "motorcycle lane" would be more enforceable and more narrow than a "carpool lane." Parking 1000 motorcycles would certainly require less space than parking 1000 cars.

Continues: http://www.infoshop.org/inews/articl...70214115724351

[tamatt27]

I agree that the motorcycle is by far the more efficient of the 2, but simply pointing out the faults of the automobile, and praising the motorcycle has little benefit. My motorcycle gets 54MPG commuting to and from work, but I use my truck most of the time because it's comfortable.

[Geotpf]

Lots of people won't (and can't) ride motorcycles. They simply aren't practical in many situations. They are more dangerous, can not easily carry children, have no luggage space, are very dangerous and uncomfortable to ride in poor weather, require special clothing to be worn (IE, you can't ride one in a business suit, so one can't ride one to a job which requires such attire unless there's a place to change/shower), etc., etc. The use of the Insight (2 seater with limited luggage space) as the hybrid as opposed to the Prius (5 seater with good luggage space) is a misnomer, as well, especially considering the Insight never sold well and has been discontinued.

[ghughes]

WOW- Not somewhat extreme- this is from Earth First- What about the horror of too many people, idiot? - I could give a laundry list of negative enviro consequences 1000 times bigger than this silly list. Forced sterilization, maybe?

[mkaresh]

This critique of the car isn't novel, but it is valid. The problem is that people place a lot of value on things that from the standpoint of humanity as a whole are not rational, and that decisions generally aren't made in a rational manner.

In the world as it is, the only thing that will lead to more rational behavior from the standpoint of reducing emissions and such is a much higher fuel cost. It's very hard to legislate rational behavior directly. But raise the price of fuel, and change would come quickly.

At a certain price people would even form car pools or become interested in public transportation.

Motorcycles, though, are not a viable alternative.

[gotz_otto]

I have always heard that motorcycles and other recreation vehicles gave of more pollution than most cars and trucks. The fact most of them do not have catalytic converters is a big part of this. Even lawnmowers and such are not that great. Unless things have changed over the years motorcycle and such do not seem to be the best way to go.

IF this is the case we should all live a mile from our jobs and walk to work.

[VibenPontiac]

Originally Posted by Geotpf

Lots of people won't (and can't) ride motorcycles. They simply aren't practical in many situations. They are more dangerous, can not easily carry children, have no luggage space, are very dangerous and uncomfortable to ride in poor weather, require special clothing to be worn (IE, you can't ride one in a business suit, so one can't ride one to a job which requires such attire unless there's a place to change/shower), etc., etc. The use of the Insight (2 seater with limited luggage space) as the hybrid as opposed to the Prius (5 seater with good luggage space) is a misnomer, as well, especially considering the Insight never sold well and has been discontinued.

No kidding you just hit every reason why most folks buy cars. The article takes up a cause without being realistic or practical...

Doesn't the picture of the Prius make up for the "misnomer" of the Insight Geotpf?

Originally Posted by mkaresh

In the world as it is, the only thing that will lead to more rational behavior from the standpoint of reducing emissions and such is a much higher fuel cost. It's very hard to legislate rational behavior directly. But raise the price of fuel, and change would come quickly.

Higher fuel costs would force some changes in driving habits in the U.S. but again its not entirely practical short term - we have a terrible public transportation system here that isn't capable of "picking up the slack" when people need to get from city A to city B or more likely from home to work and back. Suburbs would have to completely redeveloped so as to provide easy more eco-friendly methods of getting from the home to the Mall, grocery store etc... The bottom line is that unless drastic changes occur in society and urban development in the U.S a high gas tax isn't going to solve the problem long term. Maybe the funds from such a tax could be used to build public transportation systems but that's going to take decades to fully develop and again is quite radical for a country that likes its transitions to be smooth. High gas taxes work in Europe because the public transportation system was already in place and the countries are much smaller meaning land use for huge one deck parking lots and 8 lane highways is impractical.

[mkaresh]

If you look at infoshop.org, you'll see that they bill themselves as "your online anarchist community."

I never knew anarchists were so in favor of legislation.

[unkillsam]

This article is a bit of a stretch, there are severel intentional factual errors.

1. Cars are not 10% thermally effiecient, depending on model they are 25 to 40 % efficient.

2. Automobiles do not contiubute to 25% of CO2 emmissions. The vast majority of CO2 emmisions are natural, such as volcanic eruptions.

[mkaresh]

Originally Posted by VibenPontiac

Higher fuel costs would force some changes in driving habits in the U.S. but again its not entirely practical short term - we have a terrible public transportation system here that isn't capable of "picking up the slack" when people need to get from city A to city B or more likely from home to work and back. Suburbs would have to completely redeveloped so as to provide easy more eco-friendly methods of getting from the home to the Mall, grocery store etc... The bottom line is that unless drastic changes occur in society and urban development in the U.S a high gas tax isn't going to solve the problem long term. Maybe the funds from such a tax could be used to build public transportation systems but that's going to take decades to fully develop and again is quite radical for a country that likes its transitions to be smooth. High gas taxes work in Europe because the public transportation system was already in place and the countries are much smaller meaning land use for huge one deck parking lots and 8 lane highways is impractical.

Did you mean to say it wouldn't solve the problem short term? I think it would solve the problem long term.

Even if you believe in E85, what's the better way to boost it?

--legislate that a certain amount will be produced, and that a certain number of gas stations will have to sell it, and then subsidize it

--tax oil to the point that people favor E85-capable vehicles then seek out stations that sell the stuff

[VibenPontiac]

Originally Posted by mkaresh

Did you mean to say it wouldn't solve the problem short term? I think it would solve the problem long term.

Even if you believe in E85, what's the better way to boost it?

--legislate that a certain amount will be produced, and that a certain number of gas stations will have to sell it, and then subsidize it

--tax oil to the point that people favor E85-capable vehicles then seek out stations that sell the stuff

I wasn't speaking of alternative fuels but of high gas taxes...and yes I meant it wouldn't solve anything in the short term. I too believe they could work in the long term but high gas taxes would have to be combined with making significant changes to the public transportation infrastructure, the way society views getting from A to B, and urban development...just to name a few items.

I tend to view E85 the same way I view hybrids...both are useful and very viable technologies but they are both bridges, albeit quite long ones , to something else - be it full fledged biofuels (used in everything not just cars), hydrogen, or the "Mr. Fusion" power supply

[mgescuro]

Part of the solution is to make cities more friendly and attune to mass transit. How many cities in the US really are geared for high density, mass transit solutions? 5? That's really a pathetic number when you think about it.

I don't really believe the changes need to come from the cars themselves. They are an American way of life. The way our country and cities were designed were to take advantage of the automobile. But as the population expands, the roads become more and more congested. Suddenly, the car isn't such a hot idea anymore. But that doesn't mean we have to get rid of it... or ride motorcycles.

What needs to happen is a shift in the collective mindset. TAke a bus. Take a train. Take a subway. Bike. Walk. Do it at every possible opportunity.
Build malls and suburban centers around mass transit hubs.... and constrain parking lots, so people HAVE to use public transit to get there.

Case in point: San Francisco opened up the largest urban mall west of the Mississippi last September. The total number of new parking spots to support the new mall?? ZERO!! There's already a 5,000+ city parking garage across the street. The hitch? That parking structure also supports the very large Moscone Convention Center, MOMA, and the Union Square Shopping District. Ouch. But, the mall is also built above 2 subway lines that continually funnel passengers directly into the mall. Has there been a parking issue? Not even with the massive OracleWorld convention which caused a shutdown of a 3 square block area of the Convention Center. Not even with MacWorld. The pressure was put on mass transit -- SF Muni Metro and the BART system -- as well as 30+ different bus lines from 4 other systems.

THAT'S how you're supposed to do it. Anywhere else, that would have added up to 100,000 other cars in the area easily.

[Butz]

Now they are trying to ban the car!

[Geotpf]

Originally Posted by Butz

Now they are trying to ban the car!

Will never happen (at least not in the US).

[eaton53]

This leads to the question: If the greatest fuel saving in a hybrid comes from reducing the number of passengers, why not reduce it again from 2 to 1 and ride a motorcycle? Are there advantages of hybrids that have not been available for decades via motorcycles?

Geez... how about these reasons....
It's 13 degrees here.
I'm allergic to road rash.