Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer, wants us to quit chasing after the much-hyped “hydrogen economy.” I can’t say that I disagree.

From his article “The Hydrogen Hoax“:

What is needed is government action to break the vertical monopoly on the automobile fuel supply currently held by the petroleum cartel. This could most efficiently be done simply by mandating that all new cars—whether of foreign or domestic manufacture—sold in the United States be “flex-fueled.” Such cars, which can run on any mixture of alcohol or gasoline, are currently being produced in the United States for little more (typically an extra $100 to $200) than the same vehicles in non-flex-fueled form. But they only command about 3 percent of the market, because there are so few high-alcohol gas pumps to serve them. Conversely, the reason why there are few high-alcohol pumps is because there are not enough flex-fuel cars on the road to warrant them. If you own a fuel station with three pumps, you are not going to waste one distributing a type of fuel that only 3 percent of cars can use.

Yet within three years of a flex-fuel mandate, there would be at least 50 million cars on the road in the United States capable of using high-alcohol fuel, and at least an equal number overseas. This would be a sufficient market to create a widespread network of high-alcohol fuel pumps. Moreover, this dramatically increased demand for alcohol fuels would greatly exceed the supply capacity of American corn-ethanol producers, which means that we could drop our current tariffs against Latin American sugar-ethanol. A similar circumstance would pertain in Europe and Japan, enabling the elimination of their protectionist measures against Third World agricultural imports. This would solve the problem of trade barriers against farm products that scuttled the recent Doha round of international trade talks, thus benefiting rich and poor nations alike.

By simply exposing the oil cartel to competition from such alternative fuel sources, we could impose a powerful constraint on its ability to run up prices. Combined with an unrelenting tariff policy favoring alcohol over imported oil, we could destroy OPEC completely, and effectively redirect over $600 billion per year that is now going to the treasury of terrorism to the global agricultural and mining sectors. Instead of sending our money to the Islamists to spread fanatical ideology, we could give our business to the world’s farmers, coal miners, and other people who actually work for a living. Instead of selling off blocks of stock in Western media companies to Saudi princes, we could be selling tractors to Honduras. Instead of funding terrorism, we could be using our energy dollars to finance world development. That’s what a serious energy policy would look like.

(emphasis mine)

[The New Atlantis via The Lone Sysadmin]

It’s a couple of years old, but I finally had a chance to watch the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”. Nothing about the history of the GM EV1 surprised me, including GM’s destruction of the entire EV1 fleet.

The documentary includes mention of hydrogen fuel cells, which appears to be more of a stall technique by those invested in fossil fuels than the promising innovation that it’s often portrayed to be. It’s decades away and several times more expensive than gasoline or electricity.

Consumer demand is the only force that will result in plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles being manufactured in this country, and before you can demand it, you have to know that it is possible and already exists with today’s technology.

Here’s the trailer for the documentary:

The dumping of coal ash, also called “fly ash,” is unregulated by the EPA. The problem with calling reduced-emission coal burning “clean coal” is that the cleaner the air emitted by the coal power plant, the dirtier the ash becomes.

The ash contains toxic compounds such as arsenic, mercury, and aluminum which can cause cancer if they leach into ground water, and that’s exactly what seems to have happened in eastern Pennsylvania.

You definitely shouldn’t just throw them in the garbage when they burn out; they contain mercury. Until this week, options for convenient responsible disposal of CFLs were limited. Home Depot announced Tuesday that they will begin accepting compact fluorescent light bulbs for free recycling at all of their stores.

From the press release:

At each The Home Depot store, customers can simply bring in any expired, unbroken CFL bulbs, and give them to the store associate behind the returns desk. The bulbs will then be managed responsibly by an environmental management company who will coordinate CFL packaging, transportation and recycling to maximize safety and ensure environmental compliance.

[NY Times via EcoTech Daily]

The city of Fort Collins, CO, has set up a Yahoo Group for their Leaf Exchange program:

Wondering what to do with all those fallen leaves, or do you need leaves for composting or mulching? The City of Fort Collins offers a web-based service through Yahoo! Groups making it easy to exchange your leaves by communicating directly with people who want leaves or have leaves to give away.

As a courtesy, leaves should be free of rocks, trash, tree limbs, grass clippings and garden debris, and if they’re bagged, be sure to empty the leaves and take your bags back home with you.

Not being a homeowner and thus not responsible for leaf disposal myself, I doubt I’ll muster the motivation to organize something like this in Madison, but I’ll be mentioning it to the homeowners I know.