Global Warming: Always in season!

Let’s step away from technology and communication for just one story and stick our noses back into global warming. Americans (as seen on TV!) are pretty notorious for enjoying big burgers (guilty), living in huge McMansions, vegging out in front of enormous televisions, and peddling gigantic gas guzzlers around town. So let’s talk about transportation… stateside.

Here you’ve got your ULEVs (Ultra-Low Emission Vehicles), SULEVs (Super Ultra…), and the PZEVs (Partial Zero Emissions Vehicles). At least that’s what the stickers on the windows of new cars claim. And sure, there’s other acronyms driving around but the only ZEVs I’ve seen are the two-wheeled kind locked to lamp posts.

It used to be that the American car manufacturers were pretty content ignoring the environmental “hearsay” and busy building bigger SUVs and wider cars with more cup holders but just recently trends are finally starting to reflect the rest of the world. While little is being done to revolutionize the automobiles coming out of Detroit, the Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler) have started to wise up their advertising. They’ve put a new name on E85 fuel calling it “Flex Fuel” which has been at gas stations sprinkled all over the western half of the U.S. for years. I haven’t found any stats indicating otherwise but I’m pretty certain automobiles have been able to run on E85 since the dawn of forever.

Read this: Flex Fuel vs. Diesel vs. Hybrid

Before this turns into a complete condemnation of American automobiles let me segue by suggesting the obvious–we need better transportation solutions. Technology in every other industry that doesn’t rely on the price and availability of petroleum progresses infinitely faster. Meanwhile the average MPG on automobiles in the last 10 years has increased at a truly pathetic pace.

Americans (and citizens of the globe!) shouldn’t be so concerned about finding alternative fuels but rather finding alternatives to traveling altogether. For most of us, its too soon to know what’s going to happen, but keep an eye and an ear out and we’ll start to understand our future together a little bit better.