Posted by wunhuanglo [ 68.222.3.214 ] on April 04, 2005 at 20:30:47:
In Reply to: Re: America's Fuel Program posted by manualblock on April 04, 2005 at 14:50:52:
My bet is that moving will be the answer for a lot of people long before alternative energy sources are developed commercially.
Middle class people will return to the cities - there's a lot of unused room in every major city I've visited - abandoned apartment houses and single family dwellings - in cities like NY these abandoned units are cheek by jowl to some of the highest rent living space in the world. People will abandon commuting in favor of rehabilitating this housing stock.
We have ever increasing numbers of people and not a hell of a lot of arable land that’s not in use. Much prime farm land has been turned into suburban sprawl. I think this makes bio-fuels not too likely, at least in the long term – we need the land for food production.
Hydrogen is a long way off – you need to put as much into hydrolysis as you can get out of a fuel cell, so all we can practically do is make nuclear power portable – we have to build a lot of big nuclear plants to disassociate water, and that means not only huge investment but solving what’s been an intractable problem for the past 25 years – what do you do with the spent fuel. Money can address those issues, but gasoline will have to be hellaciously expensive before hydrogen from nuclear plants looks good.
Long term, I have to believe our future is being lived today in Japan – rural farmers who never see the city – city dwellers who only see the country by public transportation – rare and expensive private vehicle ownership – incredibly high concentrations of people in the urban centers, making commuting by public transportation feasible.
Oh, yeah, one other thing – drinking to a near stupor every night while smoking 2 packs a day to deal with the stress of it all.
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