Well this could be interesting

It seems that the state of California has decided to sue automakers for greenhouse gas emmissions causing environmental harm. I have no idea if this will actually succeed in doing anything sadly. As it is California has been trying to institute a law to reduce tail-pipe emissions but that has been held up in the courts by the automakers. All this reminds me a movie I saw this summer "Who killed the electric car?" I don't know if it's still playing but if you get a chance to watch it I would suggest that you take that opportunity.

Since I'm on the topic of cars and pollution I want to mention a few things that I'm not sure everyone is aware of, dealing with some of the new initiatives in place. The first is ethanol mixed fuel. This is big here in the Midwest. They use agricultural crops, like corn to get ethanol which they mix with the gas; producing what is called E85 fuel. And no, unlike it is suggested by the name it is not 85% ethanol, it's only 15% ethanol. Which might actually be a good thing, seeing as the E85 cars are LESS fuel efficient!

Don't believe me, let's look at the EPA site for the data on the 2006 Dodge Caravan

Fuel Type E85 Gasoline
MPG (city) 13 19
MPG(highway) 17 26
MPG(combined) 14 21

That's right, it's 33% LESS fuel efficient! Sure maybe we are "getting away from our dependence on foreign oil" by using E85 fuel, but we're actually fucking the environment up faster that way. Maybe if we just adopted better fuel standards we might actually be able to supply our own fuel demands with our resource...nah that wouldn't work, everybody wins that way.

Oh and the hydrogen fuel cell, that everyone is so eager to jump on board with. Well being in the research field and actually having meet numerous people who work on making these things work here's the summary of what they say: they suck! Sure you can turn hydrogen and oxygen into water and get energy from it. But where do you get the hydrogen from? It turns out you either have to get it from water or hydrocarbons (oil). And if you know anything about thermodynamics you suddenly go "wait a minute, don't you lose energy when you convert energy from one form (chemical) to another (electricity)?" Well, unless you're Lisa Simpson that's true.

So maybe we should look at the electric car again. After all we can produce electricity, we can even do it rather cleanly through nuclear power. And if that isn't enough incentive for electric cars how about instantaneous acceleration to the point of being able to dust a Ferrari?

If you want to take an active role in getting things to change check out this site, you can help get these cars to market with a small contribution as a deposit on the car once they are in production. Or at the very least get a hybrid car.

* BTW did anyone else notice the Hummer in the background of the photo at the top of the entry?