The cost of speed

(Photo courtesy of Edmunds.com)

Hello Reader(s)

Today I would like to take a short exploratory whack at where the car industry may be going in the recent wake of fossil fuel shortages, environmental destruction, and efficiency developments.

But first....


Ahhh Speed I love thee
Blast, shred curves euphorically
The cost? Life lost. Brake!

I love speed and everything about it. The smooth curves of Appalachian Highway 32 tempt me to put the accelerator pedal to the floor as I travel between Athens and Cincinnati. But the fear of legal repercussions, loss of life, and even higher insurance rates keep my inner speed freak at bay, most of the time.

Recently though though life has made me dwell on my taste for internal combustion fueled speed. I love the internal combustion engine. It is a wonderful and enduring piece of technology but it is not without flaws. Internal combustion's greatest weakness is its thirst for natural resources.

The creators of the internal combustion engine probably had no idea about how widespread and necessary it would become in the daily life humans. But now, especially in America, we need it.

I recently saw a film called Gas Land and briefly spoke with the director Josh Fox about the issue of natural gas in America. He portrays a bleak picture of hydraulic fracturing. It is a process in which companies use water mixed with chemicals and abrasive minerals to blast deep into the earth to break open natural gas deposits. The process is extremely effective and wards off foreign oil dependency. But it does it at a high cost, the pollution of watersheds and the destruction of natural habitats. Gas companies argue against Fox saying the process is safe and incidents of pollution are isolated. But it is hard to dispute flammable "drinking water."

This got me thinking. We need gas like a crackhead needs his/her fix. We have new hybrid cars but they are an imperfect solution. First they disappointingly sacrifice speed although there are some exceptions. Like the new Infinity M35h and Porsche's newly developed 918 supercar. Both offer huge horsepower for a hybrid as they couple the insta-torque that electric motors are known for (Check the Tesla Roadster) but I still am not convinced.

Life is an existence full of duality. Energy is no different. Say we exnay gas powered cars, what are we left with? Electric motors. Then we still need energy from power plants burning coal or producing nuclear waste. Furthermore these cars are much less efficient than say a 1993 Honda Civic Vx which gets 45 mpg's. They also weigh much more meaning that they will need a more electric hungry power plant to fuel them. Finally the batteries needed to power these vehicles are just as detrimental to the earth as hydraulic fracturing, it just happens over seas. The earth elements needed to make batteries have to be mined from deep in the earth and this process rapes mother earth as much as any other form of mining.

None the less we are headed in the right direction.

I am starting to look at natural resource dependent energy like a car restoration. When you first get a car you want to restore it is usually in rough shape. It is rusty, maybe doesn't run, the interior smells like the swamp toads that mated in it for seven years, and many pieces are missing. Frankly there are days when you want to just say screw it and throw it to the scrap yard. But slowly the car gets blown apart. Every piece is looked over and refurbished if need be and by the time its over it looks better than it did from the factory, and no one see's the work that has been done.

Right now we are in the blowing apart stage. We found the rusty, misfiring, dinosaur that is the energy crisis. Experts are in the process of diagnosing problems. A plan of attack is starting to go into motion (Check Diane Rehm's interview with Dept of Energy Secretary Steven Chu).

We just need to relax and continue addressing problems and keep moving forward because, although it may not seem like it many times, we are moving forward. Drive efficiently; use hybrid car's responsibly and not just for the smug factor; ricers and racers don't forget the catalytic converters; bike or walk places; turn off the lights; conserve and most importantly think. Maybe you are the missing link to another step in weening off fossil fuels or at least using them in an environmentally responsible way. Though leads to progress and progress is beautiful even if it seems as if it is nonexistent. Life is....................................and we should keep it that way.