Transportation Ignorant –

That’s Us.

sep 26, 2010

Today the U.S. lags behind the rest of the world in transportation. We are fuelish, wasteful, inconsiderate, and global polluters of unparalleled proportions. With four percent of the world's population, the U.S. accounts for about 25 percent of the Earth's greenhouse gas emissions, half of that coming from our vehicles. The rest of the world looks upon our transportation habits with great distain. We continue to build oversized and unsafe vehicles requiring unnecessary gas consumption hence the need to drill for it in dangerous deep water places or purchase it from terrorist sponsored Middle East countries. Our president is hell bent on leapfrogging from oil to an even more dirtier fossil fuels in the form of electric from coal burning power plants, while downplaying the cleanest of fossil fuels we have right here under out feet, not offshore. And then there is another clean newly reformulated fossil fuel currently in filling stations that can be transitioned seamlessly into a 100% biofuel. However, the experts seem to pretend that these practical alternatives the rest of the world is turning to just don’t exist. According to Ian Parry, a senior fellow at “Resources for the Future,” “We’re pretty much stuck with our dependency on oil.” He was featured in the Virginian Pilot on June 21, 2010 in a feature article, “The Move from Oil Is a Herculean Task.” He says that oil satisfies the need for the range needed to drive our vehicles, and that the next step has to be fuel cell or battery where technology has yet to solve the difficult questions of rang, power, and weight. Our President, our press, and the aforementioned “expert” have all thrown up their hands to what is right under our dumb noses. So let’s have a look.

Fuels We Should be Using.

Natural Gas. After an era of declining production, domestic natural gas production in the U.S. is booming to record-high levels. The U.S. is now swimming in natural gas, and it’s all on land with absolutely no more need to make expensive and unsafe drills off shore. Besides making more land-based natural gas discoveries in the last five years than any other country in the world aided but advances in technology for extracting natural gas from shale and methane beds, America has finally arrived at energy independence. The U.S. is quite literally staring in the face of an era when a switch to Natural Gas Vehicles (NGV) and later Fuel Cells Vehicles (FCV) (FCV run on hydrogen extracted from natural gas) will return the U.S. to total energy self-sufficiency. The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said America does not need any new coal or nuclear plants "ever" again. With this unexpected bonanza in the cleanest of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas), one would expect the press, Congress, corporate America, and the President to be rushing to boast of our great fortune and grease the skids for a surge in natural gas use in our vehicles. But this is not to be because we’re a transportation ignorant nation. The discovery of gold in California created a “gold rush” in 1848. Have we lost what used to drive us to places like the moon? For example, let’s look at how Congress is handling this overwhelming stupendous good news. On April 05, 2009 Dan Boren (D-OK) introduced H.R. 1835, “the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act” (or “NAT GAS” Act), to the 111th Congress, a bill that contains robust support for natural gas transportation initiatives, legislation that would provide incentives, mostly as tax credits, for gas-fueled vehicle production and overnight installation of natural gas filling stations. Amid the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and our continuing requirement to import 65% of our oil from Middle East terrorist sponsor nations, you’d think Congress would leap at a bill that takes advantage of our new found discoveries of clean natural gas. Well think again. A year and a half later Congress still has not passed this legislation.

Currently there is only one natural gas vehicle (NGV) sold in America, the Honda Civic GX NGV, acclaimed the “world’s cleanest internal-combustion vehicle.” It’s produced in Marysville, Ohio and purchase of this NGV qualifies buyers for a $7,000 tax credit. NGV’s are 90 percent cleaner than the average gasoline-powered car and 98 percent of the natural gas fuel the vehicles uses is taken out of U.S. soil. The MPG rating is 24 mpg city – 36 mpg highway. With compressed natural gas (CNG) selling for $0.70 per gallon and gasoline at say $2.60 per gallon, that’s the same as 90 mpg city /134 mpg highway equivalent. So what’s the catch? This car sounds too good to be true. Why aren’t we seeing these cars all over the place? First the car is sold in only two states, New York and California, and even there natural gas stations are not in abundance. Even with natural gas stations in some places further apart than the car’s range, Honda can’t build them fast enough and there’s an eight month wait. Besides buying a Honda NGV, there are conversion kits that sell for as low as $100. If the vehicle runs out of CNG, the system automatically switches back to gasoline. Of course the whole slowdown is coming from an uninformed public that simply has not ever heard about the natural gas act. So with little pressure from constituents Congress sits on the NAT GAS Act and as of this date has not brought it to the floor of the Senate. Democrats who could bring NAT GAS up for a vote don't support it on the basis that it’s fossil fuel and not solar or wind power.

Today, there are more than 7 million NGV’s in the world, but only 2% of them (150,000) are in the US, and most of those are commercial vehicles. With less than 2% of the world’s oil supply and more natural gas than any other country (except for Russia) we could have taken big oil down a long time ago by switching to NGV’s. Being the world’s largest auto consumer, the rest of the world would follow, not the opposite way around as U.S. automakers scramble to catch up with just about every new innovation coming down the pike. While the U.S. automakers have little incentive to make NGV’s, up north across the border, the Canadian Natural Gas Vehicle Alliance is making an all out effort to promote natural gas vehicles. My son who just moved from NH to GA says that people are smarter the further north you go. There must be something to that.

So we’d think that the President would be putting America’s fortunes in either NGV or FCV with all the natural gas we have. Think again. The Obama Administration says plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) will lead to quicker reduction in emissions and oil reliance in a short time, all beginning in 2012. The administration is pushing for something not yet available, a light unsafe car that will not be as pollution free as NGV’s or FCV’s when utility emissions are factored into the equation shifting emissions from cars to coal-fired power plants; will add $2,000 to $3,000 to the cost of a conventional hybrid; and will put resale values in the toilet when factoring in the replacement cost of that $5,000 lithium battery (after 100,000 miles). It just seems to me as if someone has erased our collective memories. Remember “expert” Ian Parry’s testimony? “We’re pretty much stuck with our dependency on oil. We don’t have any substitutes.” Admittedly, we’d have to build a lot of natural gas filling stations, and that could take some time, perhaps six months or less. Perhaps we forgot how fast we switched over from leaded to unleaded gasoline. Protagonists said it would take years to retrofit gas stations, but it happened over night. But then there’s another clean fuel we already have in our filling stations, a fuel just about everyone in the rest of the world is latching onto except us, and the crying shame of it is, we have it here, now, today in our filling stations, all going for the most part unused. Read on….

Diesel. New clean diesel is a proven reformulated fuel that delivers the best of all worlds: high fuel efficiency, high performance, low-emissions coupled with a widely available fuel. Federal clean car tax incentives from $900 up to $1,800 still remain available through the end of 2010 for consumers purchasing certain clean diesel vehicles. With all that going for diesel, you’d think American consumers would be rushing to buy diesel vehicles? Think again. Auto manufacturers are dragging their feet in introducing these clean high mileage diesels back into the U.S. market because American consumers continue to have a mindset of the old 20 year ago diesels that were loud, dirty, and hard to start in winter. In 2006 the EPA required the introduction of Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) which removed a major polluting component of diesel fuel, paving the way for clean emission control technology, higher mileage, and more powerful turbo engines. Coupled with recent engineering breakthroughs, today’s turbo diesels outperform gasoline engines in every aspect – environment, fuel economy, maintenance, longevity, and acceleration. Clean diesel cars on the market today deliver 30% better fuel economy than gasoline cars, and it’s cheaper to refine. In Europe diesel fuel is 25% cheaper than gasoline. Here it’s more expensive because of supply and demand. But with wider ownership of diesels Americans would cut their fuel cost in half while reducing pollution. About half of all cars sold today in Europe are diesel and that percentage is quickly increasing. Here diesels are less than one percent of the market. This year Volkswagen, Audi, and BMW will introduce more diesel models. The big U.S. three automakers still have nothing to offer.

Now comes the part hard to believe, but then again we’re about the dumbest nation when it comes to energy usage. Diesel fuel comes from two places – fossil fuel, and animals and plants in the form of biodiesel. Biodiesel can be mixed in with fossil diesel in any proportion. Pure biodiesel (B100) reduces carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) by more than 75 percent, lowers sulfate emissions by 100 percent, and lowers polluting hydrocarbons emissions by 93 percent. So as more bio products become available diesel will become 100% non-fossil, and unlike ethanol which competes for food sources we eat, biodiesel comes from non eatable plants and trees. And the one tree that is gaining world-wide acclaim is the moringa tree, a better source of biofuel than even the Jatropha. To encourage biodiesel production, the federal government six years ago provided a biofuel tax incentive, but those incentives ran out at the end of 2009 because Congress failed to extent the credit, causing the fledgling U.S. biodiesel industry to suffer dearly. On Sep 16, 2010, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) attempted to add the renewal of the credit to a small business bill currently under consideration in the Senate, but his motion did not receive the necessary 67 votes. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, called Grassley’s motion and another GOP proposal stunts meant to score political points. Thus big oil continues to hold Congress hostage, and Americans continue to be in the dark about legislation that could have prevented the Gulf oil spill. Florida, who’s shores are currently being polluted by oil, are growing more Jatropha than all of the other states combined in unwanted arid southwest Florida – oh, the irony, and oh the ignorance!

Vehicles We Should Not Be Driving.

American vehicle consumers need to undergo a fundamental lobotomy in rethinking their vehicle buying preferences. Considering all classes of vehicles, we have 34 percent of our vehicles in a gas guzzler bracket getting 20 mpg or less (combined city / highway mileage). In stark comparison European and Japanese vehicle owners fit less than one percent of all their vehicles into this category. I repeat, for these gas guzzler vehicle types, U.S. - 34%; Europe and Japan - less than one percent. Typical of vehicles we should not be driving are Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV). Classified as trucks, SUVs have become so popular in the U.S. that almost half of the country drives one, an overly heavy vehicle, designed for off-road driving, a vehicle that consumes 40% more fuel than a four door sedan. Of all classes of fuelish vehicles, SUVs stand alone with 76% of all SUV model types in that gas guzzler category. Ok, so they’re fuelish, but we buy them for safety sake, right? This is the bill of bogus goods the dealers hand to uninformed customers, but in fact SUV’s are among the most dangerous types of vehicles on the highway today, not only to their occupants, but to others on and off the road because of their poor road visibility, stopping distance, and weight. They roll over easily, especially when hitting a guard rail. There’s a little known secret here. American guard rails were designed for sedans, not SUVs. The SUV high clearance actually helps the SUV to flip when hitting a protective guard rail, and when they do flip, nearly half of the people are killed when the roof caves in because of poor roof supports according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. If we are outraged about the Gulf oil spill we could buy more fuel efficient and sensible vehicles. Statistically only 5% of SUV’s are used for their intended purpose (hauling and off-road). The other 95% of Americans driving SUVs and the other vehicles in the gas guzzler category should be made aware in no uncertain terms that they are culpable in pushing the U.S. trade deficit to new heights (we import 64 percent of our crude oil) and contributing to the selling of our country to the Chinese (China is the largest holder of U.S. debt created through our balance of payment deficit), all because we have to import so much oil to quince our gluttonous fuelish habits. We’re truly a nation of transportation hogs frittering away a precocious resource into the air made that much dirtier and creating more global warming. Driving these gas guzzlers is on a par with that dirty, filthy, disgusting habit of cigarette smoking. Thirty years ago we had no idea that cigarettes were harmful to us. And so it goes; today most Americans have little idea the harm that driving fuelish tank sized vehicles down the road is doing to us, to our children, and to our grandchildren.

Conclusion.

On April 20, 2010 this country, at one twentieth of the world’s population, was using 20 million barrels of oil a day, 25 percent of the world's produced oil. That’s 60 times more oil usage per U.S. citizen than non-US citizen. April 20th was the day of the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig causing the loss of 11 lives and a gargantuan oil spill of 200 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico. Today, months later, we are still using 20 million barrels of oil a day. Legislators were caught in the crosswinds of public outrage and big brother oil companies who heavily fund legislators’ campaign coffers. Since January 2009, BP has investing nearly $16 million to ensure politicians pass favorable legislation. It is no wonder that some legislators openly criticized a $20 billion escrow account President Obama demanded BP set aside to pay victims of the spill. Not only are we addicted to oil, but BP and their big brother oil corporations continue to insure that those oil drug dealers in Congress keep us hooked. Folks around the world are quietly looking upon the Gulf oil disaster as the U.S. getting its just rewards for such appalling fuelish habits.

Perhaps the “Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch,” twice the size of Texas, the largest of several swirls in our great oceans containing mostly discarded plastic oil-based articles that break up into little pieces for fish to swallow and for us to eat; just perhaps God is trying to tell us something, and yet we don’t get it. We can’t make the connection. We just ignore that Infiniti QX S.U.V. 14 mpg driver (solo most times) who cavalierly tosses an empty plastic coke bottle out the window, to run into the stream, into the Bay, and then into the ocean. God help us all.