Ten Ways to Save the World Article

Some excellent ideas in that list. I like 'rethink cars', though I suspect most people will interpret that as 'make electric vehicles.' Which is good, but if we thought about it even more, we could make less cars, not just different kinds.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest another item for the list: "Price everything according to its true cost." There are so many subsidies, both direct and indirect, in our current economic system, that we have no idea how much items really cost us as a society. And we should.

 

There are people who flatly deny this, just as there are people who flatly deny that the earth orbits around the sun, or that the earth is not very flat at all

The oil industry alone is rife with hidden and public subsidies, grants, etc

 

Those deniers wouldn't happen to be the same ones on the receiving end of the subsidies, would they? I'm not sure how a 'lefty' like me made it through business school, but I can assure you things are not as they may at first appear.

 

Um ... probably, yes

 

Unfortunately, one thing that humans may have to do is starting living in higher density environments, which would reduce transportation costs by distance and encourage more use of public transportation, bicycling and even walking to work from home. In short, we would need population density in cities akin to something like Hong Kong.

However, I do agree that the ultimate biofuel is oil-laden algae. Not only can it be "harvested" multiple times per month, but many oil-laden algae types can even grow in seawater, which means we eliminate the issue of needing fresh water for the tall algae tanks. The oil from these algae can be processed through catalytic crackers to produce almost any fuel you want--diesel fuel and gasoline for internal combustion engines, heating oil, and kerosene for gas turbine engines. I wouldn't be surprised that by 2025 most of the world's fuel supply comes from processing of oil-laden algae.

Besides oil-laden algae, improvements in cellulosic enzyme processing could make ANY plant material viable as a source of motor fuels. That means agricultural waste could be processed, or we could grow really fast-growing plants like bamboo, hemp or switchgrass that could be processed through cellulosic processing into any motor fuel we need.

The "intelligent grid" idea will be needed soon because with the cost of solar panels dropping like stone in water, the concept of distributed power generation becomes very viable, where every house in the neighborhood generates its own power from a solar panel array and sends out its excess to other users on an "as needed basis." I do know that GE has been working on this for years, and their research could pay off as each house will have its own intelligent power processing system to send out excess power and receive extra power as needed.

Continued research into ultracapacitors could finally make electric cars a true viable alternative to cars fueled by internal combustion engines. Within ten years, I could see automobiles seating 4-5 people with a ultracapacitor battery pack going as far as 248 miles (400 km) on a single charge, and the battery pack could be recharged in around 20 minutes at a commercial recharging station or 2-3 hours at a home charging station. These new electric cars will have solar panels on the roof, which will provide a trickle charge capability to provide short range driving capability after a day sitting outdoors on a clear day.

 

Xcel Energy and the City of Boulder, CO are setting up a pretty substantial smart grid. I think the smart grid may be here sooner than a lot of people think.

 

I'd prefer this approach. We are pissing away a lot of potential energy sources eg: offal, animal and human waste, etc