Environmental Red Herrings

5. A bio-diesel car is the most environmentally friendly choice for personal trasnportation. This idea is patently untrue for a number of reasons. First, diesel engines are notoriously dirtier than the more common ICEs out there, because 1) the nature of diesels is that they burn dirtier than spark-ignition based engines (diesels rely only on pressure and temperature fluctuations in the cylinders to burn fuel), and 2) diesels are, generally speaking, commercial engines, used most commonly in semi trucks for the massive amounts of truck shipping that takes place in the US in any given day; this fact means that few if any of the laws pertaining to increased efficiency for consumer/passenger vehicles apply, so few if any advances have ever been made. Second, more generally, the best choices, now and in the future, will be choices that involve electric propulsion to some extent or other. Hybrids are an obvious choice; not only do they get great gas mileage (75mpg for my Insight), but they burn so clean you could suck the exhaust straight out of the tailpipe and merely get a headache, if even that. The biggest obstacle holding up advancement for electric-based vehicles is battery technology: since the powers that be have insisted on pouring all their money into R&D for internal-combustion engines (and only made slight progress in more than 100 years), those who are dedicated to the advancement of modern battery technology (and the rest of us as a result) have all been left in the cold. There are countless great battery possibilities (zinc-air being the best in my opinion) which could make the "vague possibility" of electric-cars-for-all into a reality today--but it won't happen until all the money is sucked out of the fossil-fuel era and we're _forced_ to start working on what should have been our primary focus for eons now (the first car ever to get a speeding ticket in the USA, before 1900, was an electric car). Make no mistake, electric cars perform _better_ than gas cars (in addition to all their other benefits). "100% torque at stall" is really all you need to know; in other words, an electric, or electric-based car like a hybrid, can burn rubber, take off like a bat out of hell when a red light turns green. I know this having driven an all-electric vehicle exclusively for one year, and because it's true of my Insight. Where ICEs beat electric motors is at higher speeds; this fact is one the reasons that hybrids perform so well: the electric motor dominates at lower speeds and the gas engine takes over at higher speeds. But, again, all that's really needed is advancement in battery technology for sports-car like electric vehicles to be an everyday reality (my Insight sure drives like a sports car, up to at least 90mph anyway); batteries can be designed which literally feed the motor with power more quickly than the ones we have now. In the radical energy "transition" (it will be much more difficult than that word conveys) which will soon be upon us, our only good choices will be non-combustion choices. Even at this moment in history, fossil fuels must only be used with the greatest of caution; economist Richard Douthwaite has this to say on the topic: "Fossil fuels must not be used to satisfy our day-to-day needs directly, greenhouse effect or not. Oil and coal should be burned only to develop renewable-energy sources, or to increase the world's stock of metals extracted from their ores. Such fuels must not even turn bulk metal into useful goods. That is the job of renewables, which must also be used to replace metal stocks as they are lost or corroded," his basic idea being that if fossil-fuels aren't used now to begin to develop a renewable-energy infrastructure, it will be too late when the crap really hits the fan--and, of course, the poor of the world will pay the highest prices from then on, with their very lives. Related to these topics, one significant advantage of bio-diesel cars is that they can help reduce our use of the precious oil that remains on the earth (which will become far too expensive to reach in the coming years); here again, so can hybrids, which are a best bet for personal transportation between here and the all-electric cars of the future.

4. Fuel cells are the future of power for transportation. A dream not founded on the most basic facts. Separating hydrogen (a necessary element for fuel cells) from water takes a massive amount of energy. Either we're faced with burning fossil fuels for hydrolysis (a no-no in the coming energy era) or we're faced with using power from solar sources. On this latter idea, it is quite clear that using power from solar sources directly rather than inserting numerous intermediate, inefficient steps is the only reasonable way to go. For powering transportation, energy from solar sources should be used to charge batteries directly (though, this process might not even be necessary if zinc-air batteries ever become a reality). The dream of fuel cells is one of many high-tech dreams that refuses to accept the thermodynamic truths of our world and universe.

3. Organic farms are necessarily more environmentally sound entities than conventional farms. Numerous studies over the last 30 years or so have shown that large, mechanized, capitalized organic farms in fact are little better for their surroundings and people in general than conventional farms. If tractors are still used, you've still got pollution from them (and other machinery) and you have the same exact problems of soil erosion due to destruction of soil structure from use of the tractors. In addition, though the insecticides, fungicides, etc. used on organic farms are called "organic," they are still substituted in general for good farm husbandry and the detail-oriented, hands-on relationship to the farm so necessary for the maintenance of farms that are good for both people and places. Small, minimally mechanized, minimally capitalized organic farms do in fact have a much less deleterious impact than their larger counterparts.

2. Paper is great and plastic is evil. For 15 years I avoided plastic like the plague, bending over backwards (as many of us do) not to use it, making life harder for myself than it needed to be. Here's the straight dope: paper and plastic production are equally toxic, and paper recycling is even more toxic than making it in the first place. Paper is the material that makes up more than 70% of every landfill on the planet; that's right, paper. Plastic, all of it, packaging, diapers, cassette tapes, ad infinitum, hardly registers a fraction of what paper does in all landfills known to man. This has been proved time and time again by an archaeologist named Dr. Rathje (head of the Garbage Project), who was the first to undertake a scientific, archaeological excavation of a landfill, starting with the largest in the world, Fresh Kills serving New York City; Rathje has drawn the same conclusions from every such excavation he's done. His work, in fact, has led to the remodeling of landfills whenever possible, and to the creation of new landfills with the necessary attributes to ensure that biodegradation actually takes place. Critical to biodegradation in landfills is the circulation of air and moisture, and having outlets for the bio-gas which naturally offgases. When air and water can't penetrate a landfill pile, and the bio-gas (60% methane--a very promising fuel for the near future) can't escape, biodegradation does not occur, at all. Prior to Rathje's undertaking the Fresh-Kills project, his mentors and colleagues all were naysayers, claiming there was just nothing to be found, and that of course things in a landfill biodegrade. Rathje was not so sure at all. After his excavation was finished, he sent his main mentor a gift, as a memento of his success: an entire newspaper, 100% intact, from the 1890s (that's right, 1-8-9-0), found at the very bottom of a pile. The wise person should not be nearly as concerned with plastic as they are with how much paper they go through (or don't go through, or re-use, or recycle). Moreover, if one considers one particular area alone, one will see how absolutely essential plastic is to our modern-day well-being: medicine. Where would medicine be without plastic? Stuck in the dark ages when doctors were little better than magicians.

1. Living in a big city is necessarily more environmentally unsound than living in the country. Preposterous! First of all, the tall (high-rise) constructed space one finds in cities is and will be a vitally important part of sound land-use planning when Sustainable Development finally comes to the fore. As the world becomes more and more overpopulated, we must choose to build up instead of out (sprawl). Secondly, in the suburbs and rural areas, one is forced to drive almost everywhere. It is not possible to survive well in the countryside in the U.S. without transportation, and those who do survive are among the many (20% or more) in this country who live below the poverty line. In most big cities, one can easily take public transit, bike, or walk wherever one needs to go; enormous environmental plus right there. Finally, among many critical points, buildings and houses are responsible for more emissions than any other grouped source. In cities, many folks live in buildings which house numerous residents; in this way, the emissions are limited to a given number of buildings rather than a given number of individuals or families in individual homes. Dealing with emissions from a concentration of concentrated sources is much more easily and efficiently done than dealing with the emissions from many, smaller sources, separated by great distances.