America Needs to Rise to Global Warming Challenges, Not Fear Them

In response to Gore's documentary "Inconvenient Truth", what's needed is a sort of "inconvenient programme" of what has to be done to resolve the problems he points out. During WWII, the people rose to the challenge, tending victory gardens, collecting scrap, rationing gas, ridesharing, and so on.

There is a real series of actions, a programme, that can be done and which can not only resolve the problems but also generate wealth and exports...and bring the US into the 21st Century, instead of into a nuclear-coal-oil twilight.

The problem with "global warming" conferences and solutions is too little, too late. Amidst squabbling about who will make the first move, we are actually still moving in the wrong direction, globally, with more intense use of resources, more waste, and greater emissions of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants.

This would be a number of initiatives based on existing factual resources:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1. Identification of "retrograde" technologies, which are still on the rise globally. Wasteful and carbon-freeing technologies need to be identified, and "regenerative" technologies substituted.

2. Petroleum dependence/CO2: Oil is the congealed, "fixed" carbon of millions of years of solar radiation creating plant matter which is compressed into coal, then oil, then natural gas, and then into carbon mineralization at great depths. Energy use that attempts to substitute lesser forms of carbon formation - for example, ethanol or biofuel - will be as futile as coal is a non-solution.

Battery, electric, or other replenishable energy, ultimately drawing from regenerative sources, must power most transportation.
Batteries such as the EV-95 Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH), used in the Toyota RAV4-EV, drive the EV up to 80 mph for up to 120 miles. These are different from the "small-format" NiMH used in the prius, Honda Civic, and other "parallel" hybrids.

The large-format NiMH EV-95 batteries have three capabilities:
- Deep discharge of up to 40 kilo-Watt-hours ("kWh"), enough to take an EV 120 miles;
- Long cycle-life, at least 1000 cycles of 120 miles or more than 120,000 miles;
- Power to accelerate the EV without the help of a gas engine (Cold Cranking Amps "CCA").

EVs such as the Toyota RAV4-EV, with a small engine-generator, make it possible to drive 90% of the time oil-free. When the batteries are exhausted, the gas engine comes on to charge the batteries for the occasional long trip.

NiMH batteries are protected by "shotgun patents" held by Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.; the worldwide patent rights were sold to General Motors, which then sold them to Texaco, now Chevron Oil Corporation.

The patents are controlled by a unit of Chevron, which sued Toyota, extracting a $30,000,000 settlement. Shortly thereafter, Toyota shut down the large-format EV-95 line, and that battery is no longer available on any market.

A crash program of building serial-hybrid plug-in EVs, breaking the stranglehold that Chevron has on it, forcing auto makers to perform if they want to survive, and breaking the hold of oil companies over auto companies.

Petitions and picketing, support and letters to all auto makers that the petitioner will NOT buy a new gas-based car and will postpone that purchase until they offer a plug-in serial hybrid.

Resources: http://PlugInAmerica.com
http://PlugInPartners.com
http://SetAmericaFree.org
http://DrivingTheFuture.com

3. Complete revisiting of our transportation plan (i.e. we don't have one), from the air corridors to ground-transit interfaces, to urban design. The air corridors over L.A., for example, are a mess; they grew like topsy, and little thought was given to airport location and ground transport to the airport, shuttles, trains, and interfaces with freeways.

Urban design should lower the need for transport, edible landscaping can reduce the use of long-distance food transport, water-wise can lower the need for water transport, and flex-power solutions can move industrial transport to depend on off-peak electric power.

4. Solar industries need to be ramped up in a crash program of building and installation. Every rooftop in America must have solar electric Photo-Voltaic ("PV") generation, and, where appropriate, solar thermal water. There is a worldwide shortage of solar panels and the high-quality silicon needed to stoke the foundries which produce the chips used in the cells. This is an opportunity for thousands, hundreds of thousands, of new jobs and new construction, leading to an export commodity that is in demand everywhere, solar Photo-Voltaic panels.

Solar is really, according to an analysis by "Solar Today" magazine, the only potential source sufficient to provide the additional tera-Watts of capacity we will need by 2050, and is completely without emissions when generating power.

5. Wind generation also must be the subject of a massive building operation, including protection of birds and viewscapes.

These massive building projects actually create jobs, wealth and exports. The Clean Water Act, by requiring secondary standards for sewage treatment in 1972, created the largest civilian construction project in history; it sure didn't bankrupt us. To the contrary, it generated health and wealth.

6. In World War II, the home front felt the pain of rationing. If Global Warming is, as scientists believe, a critical challenge, the home front can accept a graduated tax on gasoline. The first 20 gallons per month, for example, would be at only $1; after that, the price would be $12 per gallon or more. This alone would stimulate higher efficiency cars, and promote confiscation, junking and crushing of gas-guzzlers.

7. Mass building of electric transit systems. As part of the transportation plan, our rail system needs critical scrutiny it has never had.
-separation of freight and passenger (completely different requirements)
-double-tracking to avoid switching
-grade-separated runs
-straight rail roads, and integration with container docks and distribution
-commuter rail
-bike trails for commuters, with real separation from cars
-skate and pedestrian protection, so that it's always possible to walk from point to point

8. Incentives for regenerative technologies, and Carbon tax and other penalties for retrograde technologies (applied in the widest sense, such as high-commuting suburban shopping centers).

9. Outreach so that people get involved in the solution, and are proud of raising food at home without pesticide, low-water use, low-waste, bicycling, etc., and are rewarded for it, while retrograde actions are penalized and scorned.

This, and more, can be done.

Instead of finding excuses, making up reasons why "it can't be done" or manufacturing "insurance" obstacles, instead of blaming someone else, we could make it happen.

It can be wrapped into a proposal for "sustainable living" centers at all colleges, with outreach to the community and to secondary school feeds.

It's a challenge; America once rose to meet such challenges, making them opportunities instead of obstacles. Will America slough off the parasitical, vampiric oil companies, and take action?

Or will we remain paralyzed by pissant dupes such as Chevron Oil, and see the sceptre of empire, as George Berkeley pointed out in 1731, sway ever westward to more savvy societies?