Other nations are doing this, why can’t we? – Someday EVERY household will be able to produce its own power for heating and lighting, using solar energy. Japan is planning on doing this by collecting solar power in space and zapping it back down to Earth and the countries in the European Union may join forces to create a huge group of wind turbines and solar panels in order to empower the EU.
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Can we find one that works before it’s too late? – If we can’t burn gas maybe we can burn grass. But if we get that grass from our prairies, we may be destroying some of our wildlife. Spraying DDT almost caused a silent spring. Will ethanol do the same thing?
The unintended consequence of crop-based biofuels may be the loss of wildlife habitat, particularly that of the birds who call this country’s grasslands home. This is not happening because we’re turning grass into gas, it’s because we are clearing so much prairie in order to plant more corn.
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Tires are a necessity, but disposing of them is a headache. There are all kinds of surprising uses for weeds, and latest in green technology is using the common (annoying) dandelion to make biodegradable automobile tires. Using the ordinary weeds growing all around us to create substitutes for polluting products is a dream resurrected.
Right now, most of the world’s rubber comes from tropical rubber trees, which are sliced in the trunk to allow the white latex to drip into a can (the same way syrup is tapped from Maple trees).
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The PERFECT fuel would be air and France is developing a small car that runs off a tank of compressed air. If that doesn’t work, one of the components of air (hydrogen) would be the perfect fuel, except that the molecules are too small to keep in the gas tank. But now this problem may have been solved, and the predicted death of the green, hydrogen-fueled automobile, has undergone a reincarnation.
However, there are many problems with using compressed air to power a vehicle. The most significant is that a reasonably sized tank cannot hold much energy in this form, so it’s impossible to predict with any certainty when this vehicle will actually hit the streets.
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