The situation
The environment is seriously in danger/already endangered by greenhouse gasses leading to climate change and the etreme weather, spoil erosion, tidal level rise and other woriies. A big part of this is proven to be man made burning of carbon rich fossil fuels especially in transportation
The debate
Car usage is exponentially rising as new regions develop further following the model of the so called 1st world. Therefore the cumulative effect of the increase in damage were things to carry on as they are is unthinkable. Something has to be done
There are many different approaches all governed by cost, price of implementation and logistical, social and political drivers
Zero emissions is the obvious end result to strive towards, although if that is not feasible immediately then the next best thing is to take steps now towards it - but something must be done and is been done
No need to go into all the options as a google search is available to those interested, however there are 2 main schools here of the next steps
One
Turn to zero emission electric powered cars charged by fossil fuels power stations for now, but very soon nuclear or other low or zero emission power stations or solutions such as wind farms, solar, tidal. Solar is natures answer to the power station that charges the battery - this, once implemented would be zero emission clean energy of mass transportation. Electric cars are not new, they have been around 100 years, but never caught on as nowhere as easy as petrol cars. However still not as convenient, the technology has improved vastly and is continuing to do so at an incredible rate - we already have the nuclear station option available to charge the battery - so theoretically if everyone agreed today we could all have zero emission mass transport costing around 50 - 100 times less than petrol and zero damage to the environment. There is opposition to existing nuclear and zero em power station alternatives like solar and wind etc will take a lot of time, money and political will.
The car makers are all backing the electric car end result via hybrids while the tech catches up with ICEs convenience. The oil lobbies have no interest in electric, nuclear, wind or solar as they lose their huge profit monopoly on energy. The environmental issue is addressed with this first choice, everyone pays more to start but soon they will be as convenient as petrol with the zero ems benefits
Two
Biofuel/fosil fuel mix. This option is favoured by the oil companies when forced to factor in the damaged environment into their plans. Biofuels are an alternative to fossil fuels as they are recently dead organic matter and not organic matter soaked in the earth for millions of years locking in carbon. The problem with crops is that they do no yield much energy for the space they consume, so turning over farmland means less food that costs more. To replace oil for the foreseable future with biofuels would need almost all the land mass we have turned over to growing crops just for energy.
A lot of frantic investment is going into making this more efficient and there is the promise of algae to do the job without having to use fertile farm land - but again there is no concrete solution only the hope of a breakthrough on this front to produce a mass method which is not happening at all
The benefits are that existing diesels ICEs can be converted to using a bio fuel mix that AT best would give a reduction of greenhouse gasses between 50% - 90%. At 90% lots of other more deadly gases would be emitted, that we would have to deal with later. Heres the kicker, if everyone used the pure bio fuels that only emitted 10% + the dangerous stuff no one knows the effects of - then we would not be able to grow any food. Therefore the governments have called for a 20/80 mix by 2025 - guess what the 80% is - yup fossil fuel diesel
But ofcourse the oil companies would only drop 20% sales
So there you have the basic argument started on this forum recently when it was claimed Hybrid-electric was a scam and that algae WOULD replace oil
The car companies who sell diesel cars that can be expensively converted to bio desiel are nevertheless spending all the r&d on hybrid and electric
So the big question - are the car companies right to throw money at developing electric and heading toward fully electric cars as good as petrol for price range and convenience or should they have given up and accept that everyone will prefer to continue with ICE petrol/ biodiesel, which costs 130% more and emits 60% less than petrol instead of accept electric cars which cost 0.025% of the price of petrol if implemented with TODAYS powerstation/electric car technology AND have 0 emissions?
Please vote and leave your reason (optional)
Please do not post any complaints or off topic stuff especially if you have nothing to add to the debate
