“Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.”

“Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.”

“The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.”

Other fun facts includes that organic cows are more destructive to the environment. Full article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece

An article in a recent Smart Money magazine (WSJ publication) took a look at hybrid cars. From a financial standpoint, the extra $10,000 spent on the hybrid car didn’t really help with a $2,000 in fuel savings over the lifetime of the car.

From an environmental standpoint, take into consideration the additional pollution that goes in to the production of the batteries and other materials in hybrids, and it is a really bad deal. Heck, a lot of things that are getting rubber stamped friendly to the environment and just doing pollution outsourcing.

I’m bullish on Solar too, which is why I have like 8 solar panel stocks in my portfolio. But it won’t be enough, not in 5 years.

Also yes, the hybrid power trains are a problem, it is inefficient. I prefer the hybrids that don’t actually use 2 power trains. For instance the Saturn Vue (thinking about buying one for the wife). It is a hybrid but the electric motor is just used for support, and it only has the 1 power train. You don’t get as much of a mpg jump as with a full hybrid, but it runs smoother supposedly and has a better weight ratio.

I’m not a tree hugger, but thankfully these environmentally friendly solutions will win out on pure economics alone.

Ethanol works. I think Brazil proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Here is the solution. Solar photvoltaic will be on price parity with coal in 5 years. That’ll produce the bulk of our power and electric vehicles will run at a fraction of the cost of liquid fuel. While I’ve always liked hydrogen, engineering issues which are not progressing fast enough will make it part of the future that never will be. Nuclear is fine, but as I said, in 5 years solar will beat everything on price alone.

In their tests the e-85 vehicles actually got lower gas mileage. So the gas was cheaper, the gas was cleaner, but they burnt more of it. So the end result was a wash. Additionally e85 engines are less reliable and need more upkeep. Which of course costs time, money, and energy.

To solve our energy problems…. if I were King. I would immediately open up Alaska for oil. I would auction off the rights for it and use the money raised from the auctions to be put into an irrevocable trust/foundation who’se only job is to protect the Alaskan environment. I can’t see how it is at all reasonable, in today’s society, to not drill in Alaska just because of an outside risk of something possibly going wrong and possibly having an affect on a few hundred or even a thousand acres out of millions. Same goes with ocean platform drilling.

Cars are actually not the leader spewers of pollution either, coal burning power plants are. So I would go Nuclear, build 250-300 nuclear plants and we could shut down every coal burning plant in the country, as well as every gas burning plant or oil burning plant. People get worried about nuclear but it is extremely safe. Far far far more people have been killed from coal plants & coal mining than have been killed by nuclear plants. Modern nuclear power is clean, safe, and efficient.

Then for cars, the future is electric, hybrid, and hydrogen. You cannot just make smaller/lighter cars with better fuel economy, people will die in auto accidents because their frame will be made from tin foil. However if you can plug your car into an outlet, charge a battery with clean Nuclear power, and run it for 300 miles. Thats good. Hybrids are good too, and perfecting Hydrogen would be the best. Of course with electric cars you have battery issues, big, heavy, quickly worn out, and potentially toxic batteries.

The issue with batteries is much like the issue with CFL Lightbulbs. Yes…they use much less electricity, but each one has a tiny bit of mercury in it and when they’re all thrown away, billions of them, that adds up to a lot of mercury… so what happens to all those car batteries that get thrown away from every hybrid or electric car every few years?

If I were King, that is what I’d do.