So says Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Enterprises. The mega-entreprenuer became concerned when fuel costs for Virgin airlines topped $1 billion dollars a year. His first plan was to build his own refinery, but when he studied the issue, he discovered that this was a band-aid on a head wound – and not just for Virgin, but for the world.
You see, only 1 in 70 Chinese owns a car … but they all want one. They aspire to live like Americans, and they’re fast building the wealth to do just that. America is the top producer of greenhouse gasses, and plain raw air pollution, mostly from our vehicles. We have 300 million people here. China has 1.6 billion.
Right now, we’re telling the rest of the world that we’re not going to compromise our “lifestyle” for the sake of anything.
So what, then, will we be able to ask of China when the roles are reversed?
Solution? Branson is rolling $3 billion of his own money into clean fuel R & D, ranging from wind, wave and solar power to ethanol and nuclear. But, he says, we desperately need leadership from Western governments, particularly America.
The trick is going to be to offer China – and India – an alternative to fossil fuel-based vehicles. The kicker is that the country that is able to develope them first, and best, is going to make a killing in the market.
And maybe even save ourselves in the process. You think LA and Houston and New Jersey are smoggy today?
Wait till that cloud rolls across the Pacific at the end of China’s workday a decade from now.
As for Oil – there is free energy out there. There is actually multiple sources/techniques. I don’t mean running an engine on water (although this is possible) I’m talking about free energy. For example imagine a black box the size of a Gamecube that could provide the electricity for an entire house indefinitely.
Anyways, like I said, the problem isn’t oil it’s with how stuff like this, that’s been around since the 30’s (ish) has been kept in the dark.
Why do they want us to suffer and slave away for no reason?
The answer to that is the source of what you talk about in the title.
He shouldn’t have decided to show Loose Change 2 on his flights then…
That’s it, blame it on the Chinese for following our own shoddy example.
Nothing. The Chinese understand our hypocrisy and we have little to no means of applying leverage.
Since when was nuclear power a clean fuel?
That’s it, blame the Americans for following our own shoddy example.
And likewise the pressure groups and politicians funded by these industries will gain terrific power.
China’s huge, and has a 24 hour economy. I mean, the symbolism of this is compelling, but it’s so factually inaccurate that I struggle to take it seriously.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Of pedophiles, terrorists and climate change. But not of the people who constantly tell you to be afraid of these things because they are all just well-meaning folk with no axe to grind and no vested interest in the power that this fear will grant them.
[size=150]I think that the earth is overpopulated and things can only get worse. (unless we change our course somehow) The more people born, the more heat is produced from all their cravings and the warmer and more polluted the earth gets and the more energy they all use.
I was told to expect $10 a gallon gas in the future.
When I first took notice of gas prices in the early 70’s gas was .23 cents a gallon.
No one would have thought that gas would take a 1360% rise in price in 3 1/2 decades.
But in fairness to gas prices, they have not been as inflationary as California real estate, which on average has gone up about 3000% in that same time.
A small 2 bedroom run own house that sold for $20,000 in a poor area of town in the late sixties sells for $600,000 now. (again…a dumpy area to boot!)
If gas prices maintain this trend it would put it at $42 a gallon in the upcoming decades.
And what about everything that is delivered by truck, air or otherwise pegged to gas prices? Just in the last couple of years I can see prices of common products go up 20% to 30%. (Yet the government claim inflation is next to nil…they must use the same accountants that Enron used!)
I was at Kroger today and looked at some wild caught salmon for $17 a pound. (look is all I could afford to do) Now, salmon is not always this high. And you can get farm raised salmon much cheaper…polluted with PCB’s and other carcinogens.
The fruit and vegetables are getting out of sight as well. One large apple $1.58. The world is getting to be a very tough place to live unless you are rich. In the old days before genetically modified food the fruit and vegetables had some taste to them. Now the produce tastes like rubber and many time rots before it ripens.
Sure you can still find produce that has some flavor, but at what price? Organic Yams were going for $4 a pound - that translates to $4 to $6 per avenge large yam. If you wonder why the corn on the cob tastes tough or chewier than a few years ago it is because it is genetically modified corn. It has been genetically engineered to kill insects that eat it.
I hope we come up with alternative and practical energy sources soon.
Maybe the US will be making a tradeoff with China?
We all will be riding bicycles someday?
(BTW…You left out India which is even worse than China as a future fossil fuel glutton.)[/size]
Unfortunately, the rest was on a CNN report called “We Were Warned: Out Of Gas.”
20 years ago, I worked briefly for Greenpeace on an anti-nuclear power campaign. I studied it a bit, and, aside from superheated, non-radioative water runoff into rivers – a problem that can be corrected – I didn’t see a problem. Nonetheless, being 19, I assumed that the older, wiser people running the campaign knew more than I. And it was perhaps right to oppose nuclear power at the time – Reagan was in office, after all, and God knows we’d have plants made of paper mache and tinfoil.
But the time has come for the Left – of which I am obviously a part – to realize that nuclear power IS the cleanest, most plentiful renewable resource we have. Of course there’s wind, solar, wave (REALLY exciting), etc. But this technology will have to play catch up to equal the output of nuclear any time soon.
I expect to be flamed for saying that. Please hold your fire. I’m perfectly open to being persuaded otherwise. But those on my “side” who suppose that we’re going to suddenly drop our demand for energy and become some eutopian agrarian society aren’t living in the real world. We need to agressively pursue EVERY avenue of non-fossil energy, and we need to do it yesterday. (… although not while the GOP is in power . RESPONSIBLE DEVELOPEMENT are the key words there …)
If those turds ever do run out of coal and oil, I’ll be happy, because then they will be forced to switch over to an energy source that is more efficient and less expensive… damn dummies.
There is no such thing as a free lunch…
A perpectual motion machine is impossible…
Energy can never be created or destroyed…
We will always be using some form of energy and converting it into another form. And when we do, it costs energy to convert it into a different form. However, that’s not to say that there aren’t more efficient ways to produce energy. I definitely think we can be smarter than cavemen burning fossil fuels. I hope we can…
I watched the film Children of Men last night. (The basic plot is that mankind for some reason, go infertile and all of mankind is unable to reproduce) It shows the world going to shit and war breaking out. I thought about it for a little while and I think it is the fact that we are having so much offspring that is adding to the problems of this world. I think if we stopped reproducing so much, the world would be a richer better place. More resources for less people. 1.6 billion in China!!! Cripes!!! Population is the problem… not necessarily how we power our cars.
My wife and I have been talking lately about kids and right now it seems to us that a couple would have more ethical or moral reason to NOT have children than to have children. It reminds me of another thread on ILP where people we talking about people bringing meth babies into the world or giving birth to a girl in Iran and then stoning her to death at 14 because some pervert slept with her. (Sorry if my reference was unclear, but I think I made my point that populating that world could be considered unethical or a crime against humanity.)
Is nuclear fission where you drop a nuclear bomb in a lake and just net the fish off the top? We get energy from food. If we killed that many fish, and ate them all, we’d get alot of energy. It would be clean because the water in the lake would rinse it off. Right?
Generation after generation, because there were monsters outside the cave, because there was drought, because there was war, or famine, or hostile indians, had plenty of reason not to reproduce.
YOU still exist, because they chose to.
I’m not saying you should reproduce; that’s a personal decision …
But fear shouldn’t be part of the equation.
It’s never been easier, nor more promising, to be born on Earth.
If you live in the West? … well, fear is just silly.
Again: by all means, wear a condom. It serves my purposes.
Relative to what? Relative to burning tires in a heap in the garden, perhaps…
I’ve spent much of the last decade listening to the (private) consultation companies hired by the government to solve the problem of what to do with nuclear waste (a key step given the new build nuclear plans). They’ve come up with jack shit.
. RESPONSIBLE DEVELOPEMENT are the key words there …)
