Hello Everyone!
I'd like to talk about another aspect about our current society, that future generations are going to look back upon and say: "My God, that was so stupid. What in the world were they thinking."
The current absurdity involves two partial solutions to global warming and oil depletion that have been technologically "ready" for decades but which still aren't being put into practice. Namely electric cars and gasification/pyrolysis methods of converting waste biomass into fuel.
Now some readers are likely to ask, "But are electric cars ready for the market? Aren't there a lot of technical bugs to work out?" I have some news for you. Electric cars were apparently ready for the market-by Detroit's lights that is-over 100 years ago. In fact, that early 1900's car you see in the picture above is an electric car. Thomas Davenport built a prototype electric car in 1835, and electric cars were "on the market" in the US, Britain, and many Europen countries before the 20th century. Even Henry Ford was manufacturing a popular electric car in 1908. New York had electric taxis in the 19th century.
I don't doubt that technological advances matter. But how did it come to be that the electric car was "viable" in 1908, but not in 2008? One legitimate concern I suppose is that electric cars don't get the same miles and take a long time to recharge (which may change in the near future), however the idea of hybrid vehicles didn't begin with Prius either. In fact, one of the earlier Porsche models (a contemporary of these early electric cars) was also a hybrid.
During the 1970's oil crisis, people had become accustomed to driving much further distances at least some of the time with their cars, and train travel was no longer the favored option for long trips that it had been in the late 19th to early 20th century. But all the same, there was much talk of both electric cars for in city use, with combustion engines reserved for longer trips. And many ideas, some quite radical and others more conservative, were floated as to how ordinary citizens could have reasonably access to both without having to own both and perhaps while owning neither, since cars were expected to be secondary to public transit, trains, and such in the future. Also there was talk about a very basic form of plug in hybrid car and working prototypes were created in both the US and Europe. Yet, somehow what had been doable enough for the late Victorians, was the stuff of science fiction for a country that had just landed a man on the moon. Is that because modern people somehow got stupider and the technology was lost?
At the least that view is very hard to gel with the fact that electric/petroleum hybrid submarines existed throughout the late 20th centuries. Or that in recent years Seattle's Metro has to buy mainly or exclusively hybrid or electric buses. Or the recent boom in hybrid trains and locomotives. And hybrid boats. And industrial machinery.
As for flex fuel vehicles, you are perhaps getting the theme here. The Henry Ford company produced them from 1903 to 1927. Henry Ford it turns out was strongly in favor in ethanol, because of his rural sympathies. While corn ethanol is not the best source of energy, options such as algal ethanol, biomass gasification fuels, synfuels and other options might make them extremely useful options.
And let's talk about gasification fuels. That's another neglected technology, that worked fine for Nazi Germany during WWII and South Africa during the Apartheid boycott, but supposedly the modern US of A, can't possibly make use of it with oil issues a major risk factor for war and serious talk of global warming threatening our very existence. Jimmy Carter once called oil crises "The Moral Equivalent of War". Yet, late 20th century America-and so far early 21st century America-did not show the flexibility of the Nazis with their murderous Empire, or a South Africa determined to keep its racist government. Why is this? Lack of technology? Lack of imagination? Or resistance to change?
Of course, many people will site the coming solar revolution as a sign that our current society isn't quite so hidebound. But little do most of them know that solar thermal engines and power plants were built in 1904.
Sometimes it pays to listen to historian of technology, instead of relying entirely on engineers at General Motors with their ideas about what is and isn't "economically practical".
Say Goodnight Readers!
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