Biodiesel Misconceptions
Posted by Robert Rapier on September 9, 2007 - 4:15pm
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: biodiesel, energy policy, fuel efficiency [list all tags]
Sometimes I am astonished at the misconceptions people have. Take this article:
Old cars become green machines
The story is about a woman who has a number of cars that have been modified to run off of biodiesel. The cars include gas guzzlers like a Lincoln Continental Mark V, a Chevy Tahoe, and a Cadillac. But because she is running them on biodiesel, she thinks she is neither using oil nor polluting:
Colette Brooks' sprawling ocean-view property* is dotted with tricked out cars -- from a low-rider Lincoln Continental to a Cadillac with plush leather seats. The petite 49-year-old business owner might be a car junkie, but she's indulging her obsession without polluting the air by running her rides on biodiesel and other alternative fuels.
"I feel so superior driving next to a Hummer and going, ‘Dude, yo, look at this, this is what you should be doing,' " Brooks said.
While I sincerely appreciate her intent, someone walking, riding a bike, or even driving a Prius running entirely on gasoline could say the same to her. She does not recognize that her fossil fuel footprint is still very high. The problem with these sorts of perceptions is that they end up shaping policy. People may not recognize the critical need for conservation if they think they have eliminated their fossil fuel usage by switching to biodiesel (or corn-ethanol).
Today, at least 10 vehicles are parked on her property in Malibu. They include the Lincoln Continental Mark V designed by the late fashion designer Bill Blass. The gold luxury coupe has tinted windows to give it a "gangsta" look, Brooks said.
Her Chevy Tahoe demonstrates that it's possible to drive a jumbo SUV without fouling the air. And with an increasing number of filling stations in Southern California selling biodiesel, motorists don't have to go too far out of their way to feed their green machines.
A Los Angeles architect who got his 1980 Mercedes coupe from Biobling boasted that he hasn't bought gasoline in nearly a year. Though he spends about $3.29 per gallon for biodiesel, Warren Wagner said he didn't mind paying more for fuel that's produced domestically.
"I'm not supporting big oil," Wagner said. "When I'm driving it around, my car is an ambassador for alternative transportation."
I wonder where they think the gasoline and diesel that the soybean farmers use comes from. How was the biodiesel transported to the filling station? Where did the plastics and rubber in all of those vehicles came from? Where did the methanol come from that is used to make the biodiesel? Biodiesel is certainly better than corn ethanol in this respect, but don't kid yourself that you aren't using oil or polluting if you are using biodiesel.
So, while I applaud the effort, I think a better recognition of the actual embedded fossil fuels might lead to more informed decisions about which actions are more environmentally responsible. When the oil starts to run scarce, some people are going to have a rude awakening to the fact they are far more dependent upon oil than they think. This article provides a perfect example of people who suffer from such fossil fuel delusions, and it is the same kind of delusional thinking displayed by our political leaders. "Renewable fuels" with heavy fossil fuel inputs are not truly renewable, nor are they non-polluting.
I can't help but be reminded of the article I read regarding the Hummer owner who was "kicking the oil habit" because his Hummer ran on E85. A Prius running on 100% fossil fuels is going to have a lower fossil fuel footprint than a Chevy Tahoe running on biodiesel or a Hummer running on ethanol. A Prius running on biodiesel (or green diesel); well that's potentially a different matter.
* For the purposes of this essay, I shall not discuss the possible energy footprint of that sprawling property. I will presume it is not powered by coal.
http://science.reddit.com/info/2nhwp/comments
if you are so inclined...
Not quite as ludicrous as the RV that holds a sports car in its belly :P
Unfornately, to manufacture a new Prius consumes much more energy, raw materials & natural resources than she is likely to use during the remaining lifetime of those old vehicles running on biofuel.
My feeling is that diesel-like engines with be with us for decades. Despite thermal efficiencies less than 50% these engines are tough and reliable and seem to be able to work on a range of fuels. For example lipids based diesel includes methyl ester, ‘thermal depolymerization’ and hydrogenated variants which seem to be your ‘green diesel’. There is the US military’s JP8 which I understand powers both Humvees and helicopters. Fischer-Tropsch diesel can be made from both coal and woodchips. Diesel engines can be modified to run wholly or partly on dimethyl ether or compressed natural gas. The different liquid diesel fuels can be blended and even a touch of ethanol added to make diesohol. Now Citroen and other car makers have diesel hybrids not to mention the mythical GM Volt if it ever makes it.
However looking ahead I think the best form of diesel fuel will be from waste biomass probably via gasification. The early signs on algae farming are not good. The population will be too large and hungry and the climate too variable to grow soybeans and oil palms to make fuel. To use the fashionable term diesel is ‘resilient’.
Boof ( However looking ahead I think the best form of diesel fuel will be from waste biomass probably via gasification.)
I think the key words in that statement are "will be". Fusion and, it appears, cellulosic ethanol, are the energy sources of the future, and always will be.
You'll get a kick out of this. I'm looking up old tractors these days (any guesses why?), and found a few great ones. In the book "Farm Tractors 1950-1975" by Lester Larson on page 59, it covers an Allis Chalmers experimental fuel cell tractor from 1959. Apparently the tractor is now in the Smithsonian. In 1961, International Harvester tried a gas turbine engine. That, too, is in the Smithsonian, and probably no where else.
The kicker for me has always been that GM was experimenting with hybrids in the early 60s. When did the Prius really take off? Wasn't it 2004? So, 40 years or so for hybrids to go from experimental to production. Fuel cells even longer.
However, people have used wood gasification before. To answer my "any guesses" question above, I'm looking at old tractors since many of them were gasoline powered. Spark ignition supposedly works much better for burning wood gas. Here is a handy-dandy guide from FEMA for how to run a tractor on wood gas titled "Construction of a Simplified Wood Gas Generator for Fueling Internal Combustion Engines in a Petroleum emergency." PDF version here.
Here's a few guys here in Sweden who modified an old Volvo to wood gasification, and took a tour around all of Sweden this ummer. 5400 kilometers or something.
Around Sweden with Wood in the Tank
http://www.vedbil.se/indexe.shtml
And here's the photo page, including pictures of blonde female groupies. Apparantely wood gasification is hot with the chicks over here... (OK, only one picture, but I bet that got your attention)
http://www.vedbil.se/fotoalbume.shtml
Some facts about the car:
acts:
Top speed: 90km/h (105 km/h with dry birch wood)
Acceleration 0-100: Some times :)
Wood consumption: 1 cu m / 1000 km
Cruising range on one load: 70 km
Start-up time: 2-10 minutes
Kerb weight: 1460 kg
The producer-gas systems weight: 260 kg
On route, they visited and kicked life in an old tractor, to run on wood gasification/producer air. Blog entry, text in swedish, but there is a video of the engine once they got it going:
http://www.vedbil.se/dagbok/resa/20.shtml
And the wood gasification enthusiasts in Sweden have another website at http://www.gengas.nu/ but swedish language only. Sweden more or less survived on wood gasification during the entire WW2 (and that included agriculture), although car use naturally was much, much less than today.
And here we have the Finnish version :)
http://www.ekomobiili.fi/Tekstit/woodgas_as_fuel.htm
Finns are more neat and clean. Must be the great availability of alchohol for ... cleaning purposes. But as I recall, Finland has been a Swedish province for all but the last 200 years, so we get some of the credit. Hrmph.
I am interested in wood gas also and learned through this site
http://tinyurl.com/af8az how this guy processes his wood for use.
Maybe, but wood gas isn't much of an answer, and spark ignition is simply a pain in the neck on a farm. Animals chew the wires, moisture gets into the distributors, spark plugs always get fouled just when you really need something to run.
Better to just let the housing and credit bubbles take out some of those extra trucks on the roads and bring the price and supply of diesel fuel back where it belongs, instead of fueling all those McMansion Speculators.
Eventually, perhaps we will all have fusion power and I'm currently working on the electric tractors (battery and hybrid power) and machinery to match up. Until then, we should focus on conservation, Descent, and soil building, instead of 'replacement fuels', 'sustainable growth', and soil destruction.
Burning wood gas sounds great from a woodsman's standpoint, but from an ecological one, it's like taking the stuff that gets dumped at your local "don't ask, don't tell" collection site and burning all of it together. Most chemical companies started out as charcoal companies, and they contaminated a lot of land extracting wood gas to make the fine modern conveniences we call 'plastics' and 'chemicals'. Nowadays, they synthesize most of their concoctions from petroleum and coal. Let's not go backward if we can help it.
That's actually quite good (real world peak effs are low 40s to low 50s, depending on application). A hydrogen fuel cell may be low 50s, if you don't include hydrogen manufacture. A BEV might be 80-85% -- if you don't include battery charging. A methane fuel cell or a combined cycle coal burner (not exactly useful for LDVs) would be competitive.
I think a key is VMT (vehicle miles traveled). Cut that significantly !
I have my 1982 M-B 240D (manual transmission). 30 to 31 mpg of diesel BUT if I drove as much as my brothers do, I would still have a large carbon footprint.
But I use 5 to 6 gallons/month on average (last 30 days, maybe 2).
Several people have asked me why I have not switched to bio-diesel (home made) and my response was that it was not worth the hassle. I have enough on my plate as is.
Best Hopes for Using Waste Fats & Oils,
Alan
I agree, and one way would be to re-introduce hitchhiking to our society. On a recent trip (29+ mpg with three passengers) and I almost never travel, we saw only one hitchhiker and he was standing next to a sign that said Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers Next 18 Miles (reason understood) and talking to the Highway Patrol.
My son at seventeen hitchhiked from California to the Republican Convention in NYC. Thanks for the call Sgt. Bible in Colby, Kansas.
I remember hitchhiking out of NYC in December 1966 when subway fares were 10 cents. I had fifteen cents in my pocket, but wanted to save a dime for a telephone call. I was 20 years old. You could drink in NYC, but not Connecticut. So the line I heard at 5 am was "I don't understand why you guys don't save some money so you can get home". At that point with over 24 hours without sleep I looked the role, but got the ride.
Old ways were best. We got value for our money and money for our labor.
There is nothing appealing to me about the fear-driven fantasy world we now live in, but if she wants to flaunt her wealth why not go all the way and like Arnold convert her Hummer to hydrogen
Very interesting and important discussion!
I must admit that I´m a car junkie also. I´ve been restoring and rodding cars for 20 years and as you can understand, I feel quite depressed about peak oil and global warming . Most of you might think also that my carbon footprint is very large due to my interest, but the truth is that I don´t drive much with my oldies.
Alan said the important thing “I think a key is VMT (vehicle miles traveled). Cut that significantly !”
I have been thinking about to convert my latest project to electricity but the price for batteries vs range is not favourable at the moment. I am also very interested in wood gas, as we have plenty of wood over here!
We will also build a couple of electric bicycles during this winter. I also use my ordinary bike regularly and walk whenever possibly.
If and when, the collapse arrives, we need simple solutions to ensure that our basic logistical system works. Wood gas worked during WWII and it will probably work also in the future…
Hitch-hiking used to be very common in the US up until about the mid '70s or so. During WWII it was actually encouraged by the government. Then, in the mid '70s, things started to go kinda crazy, and the perception developed (rightly or wrongly) that picking up hitchhikers was a very dangerous thing to do. It was around that time that we started to hear a lot of news about stalkers and mass murderers, and it seemed like the US had become a more dangerous place.
I think that a part of it is that one must admit that a very large number of people one sees hitchhiking today do seem vaguely dangerous in their personal appearance. Back in the earlier days, you used to see lots of young men hitchhiking. They would all be well groomed and clean shaven, and wearing clothes that didn't look too bad. Many would be college students, or one would sometimes even see a young soldier hitchhiking home on leave, in uniform; such would be offered a ride instantly. You just don't see that now, and because what few hitchhikers one does see appear to be so threatening, people simply are just out of the habit of offering hitchhikers rides.
How far things have fallen. I have seen signs now that state "Do not pick up hitchhikers", and "Hitchhikers may be escaped prisoners or mental patients".
I used to hitchhike alot in 60's early 70's. Work, school, and hundreds of mile journeys. What ended my thumbing was a good male friend raped in the back of a semi.
The way I hitchhike is I go into a truck stop or a diner and introduce myself to someone working there. That person can often connect me with a regular customer who would be likely to give me a ride.
Robert, Thanks for a nice summary of how people fool themselves into thinking they are doing the right thing, when they are actually justifying what they really want to do. This will all eventually drop by the wayside as we get squeezed more by PO.
I personally own a 4 cylinder Mazda 626 and a 50cc Honda scooter with mpg of 30 and 100, respectively. There is no way any non-gas vehicle will ever compete with these. Vehicles like mine will rule the next generation. Even at $10 a gallon I can continue to motor along. I hope everyone at TOD obtains transportation systems that they can live with. Any day unforeseen events could make the purchase of a scooter look like absolute genius.
I think the saddest part of this scene is that the newspaper prints that as some kind of scientific reality. Many, possibly even most people will not voluntarily give up their energy addiction -- they still don't see it that way-- and the media will not educate them.
NeverLNG,
The newspaper writer doesn't have any concept except how the Soy Bean Fairy magicly sqeezes the beans and transports them to the biodiesel pump while the Vegan farmer is rewarded by the Goddess and God with a net energy gain for having the foresight to allow this on her farm And the editor probably knows even less.
There's a real problem in how in our society different specialists have no education in how to talk to people from other disciplines, and are not taught the critical thinking skills to question their own assumptions or those of others. Whats discouraging is the writer and editor probably have at least a bachelor's degree, and so does the advertising lady about whom the article was written. I'm sure they all pass for educated people, yet there are likely not 18 hours of hard science or mathematics in the degrees of any of them. There's also not a full year of literature or rhetoric beyond a survey course in the undergraduate degrees of most hard science or math majors that read this site.
The school I attended required 12 hours of philosophy and 12 hours of theology for my undergraduate degree. After ending up as a landman, I went back to school and took 16 hours of geology and a basic college algebra course at the local community college because I could see the holes in my education. And, I regret none of my education.
"I wonder where they think the gasoline and diesel that the soybean farmers use comes from. How was the biodiesel transported to the filling station? Where did the plastics and rubber in all of those vehicles came from? "
Robert, I have to say these don't seem significant (I don't have a sense of the magnitude of the methanol input) - in you blog I seem to remember a rough estimate that ethanol required roughly a 80% FF input, and that 60% of the 80% was process heat, leaving only 20% for miscellaneous items like this. I would expect biodiesel to be even less, with a much lower fertilizer input.
These all seem like very small inputs, which could be supplied for a long time even with reduced oil availability. The modest size of these inputs would give a reasonably long transition time, which would allow relatively simple substitution: eventually the soybean farmers certainly could use the biodiesel they produce; so could the transport to the filling station; The plastic & rubber can come from biomass; The tractors & other transport can be electrified eventually.
Do you have numbers on the size of these inputs?
I'm trying to get a feel for the actual fossil fuel usage calculations. If Brooks gets 10 mpg on B80 she is using at least as much fossil fuel at the pump as a 50 mpg Prius, possibly a little more because gasoline has a process gain benefit and requires about 10% less crude. That is just comparing the obvious petroleum quantities. She might be using B100, in which case the fossil fuel inputs to soybean oil are the main story.
I can't find a definitive quantification of the petroleum energy inputs to growing soybeans. Much more seems to be written about corn ethanol EROEI than biodiesel. But this article disputes one study claiming that 127% petroleum input is required, and supports another claiming that 30% petroleum input is required. My understanding is that caloric EROEI for U.S. food crops in general is well under 1 (10% comes to mind), so I am inclined overall to agree with Robert.
"My understanding is that caloric EROEI for U.S. food crops in general is well under 1 (10% comes to mind)"
I believe that's for the whole food distribution chain, including processing (like potato chips), transportation to retail outlets, refrigeration at the outlet, etc. I don't think that sheds light on the question at hand.
Mike, the best data I know of comes from David Pimentel, of Cornel University. Googling should give you the information, but as I recall, he gave conventionally-produced biodiesel from soy beans an ERoEI above unity, but barely -- I think it may have been 1.8 or so.
(On the other hand, Pimentel rates conventionally-produced ethanol from corn at below unity of about 0.85 -- you use more energy to make ethanol than is contained in it!)
Currently, the methanol component of biodiesel is synthesized from natural gas, and so is unsustainable and therefore "not green," although I understand it is possible to get certain micro-organisms to produce it. Methanol comprises about 20% of biodiesel. Discounting labour and capital equipment costs, methanol is the most expensive part of biodiesel made from waste cooking oil.
Biodiesel can also be made from ethanol, but the energy balance seems to be worse, because it must be anhydrous ethanol -- with no water. Pure ethanol exposed to air spontaneously absorbs 5% water. "Breaking the azeotrope" to get pure ethanol requires additional energy input over that required to make 95% ethanol with 5% residual water, as well as special handling to avoid spontaneous absorption.
I don't believe in turning food into fuel, and make biodiesel from waste I collect from local restaurants. However, this waste stream may itself become a commodity, or become scarce as fossil energy becomes scarce.
But biodiesel really misses the point, in my opinion. At an R&D cost that is a tiny fraction of the money that is being dumped into hybrids and fuel-cells and electrics, automakers could easily produce what I call "versatile fuel" diesels.
Imagine driving up to a restaurant, pumping you tank full of waste oil, and driving off, without converting it to biodiesel. Rudolph Diesel's engines ran from vegetable oil, and it was only the cheap availability of standardized diesel fuel that got engine manufacturers to produce injectors and injection pumps that were optimized for the lighter fluid. Today's computerized injection systems could be built to take pure vegetable oil as a fuel, without converting it to biodiesel or converting the vehicle to use the thicker fuel.
I put a lot of effort into this, not because I think the car culture has any future, but because farm equipment and food delivery systems are going to need diesel for some time.
:::: Jan Steinman, Communication Steward, EcoReality http://www.EcoReality.org ::::
The link I gave says that Pimental is claiming a net loss for the soybean to fuel process:
Jan, I agree that using waste for fuel would be great. The only gauge I have to figure out if we produce enough trash to serve our energy needs are the 2 waste-to-energy facilities 10 minutes from my house. The Covanta plant produces 43MW from 555,333 tons per year of trash, about 77 watts for each ton per year. According to the Clean Air Council the average American produces 1.6 tons per year of trash (4.39 lbs/day * 365 days). So we theoretically can extract 123 watts from trash, for each of us. Hopefully there will be a process more efficient than burning it to get energy.
If EROEI calculations for ethanol are controversial, soy biodiesel is both more complicated and less relevant. Nobody grows soy for biodiesel. Nobody would grow soy for biodiesel -- the yield is pathetic. The reason soy is the common feedstock is because we grow immense quantities of soy for protein so we can have $5 happy meals. And because it is also the preferred feedstock of the National Biodiesel Board, which itself is a creation of the soy industry. In this respect it is just like corn ethanol -- subsidies and greenwashing of Big Ag. That said, soy biodiesel makes a lot more sense -- within limits -- than corn ethanol.
Thanks for this Robert. As we'e discussed, waste biodiesel is "green", but there's only so much of that to go around.
Waste (or any other) Biodiesel is only part of a very elaborate and futuristic vision of sustainability. It would probably help the rest of the world if we discussed the type of society and preconditions for things like ethanol and biodiesel to truly be considered "sustainable".
1. Agriculture needs to become a lot more oriented toward local self sufficiency and wean itself of using fossil fuels for fertilizer, running heavy equipment. ie lots more small local farms instead of corporate factory farms. It probably means eating a lot less meat and employing a lot more people in the agrcultural sector.
2. We all need to drive a lot less and transport around less freight by trucks. 70-80% less VMT
3. The vehicles we do drive the remain 20-30% of the current VMTs should be a lot more efficient and have the ability to use electric-only for the first 20-50 miles of any trip.
4. Then we can use biodiesel and ethanol that is preferrably:
A. Used for an essential "need" (municipal service vehicles - police, fire, sanitation)
B. Locally sourced (on-site or within 10-20 miles)
C. From a waste stream (something that would otherwise go down the drain or to the dump)
"ie lots more small local farms instead of corporate factory farms. It probably means eating a lot less meat and employing a lot more people in the agrcultural sector."
Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper and easier to just use electric tractors and trains?
"We all need to drive a lot less"
Would it matter how much we drove, as long as it was electric, with the electricity from wind & solar?
Would it matter how much we drove, as long as it was electric, with the electricity from wind & solar ?
Yes for two reasons.
One, it is a minimum of 35 years till the North American electrical grid could be 100% non-GHG (and even then a lot of nuke).
Two, more VMT means more supporting energy. Asphalt & concrete for more roads , more energy to sustain Suburbia. Hard to visualize battery trucks capable of delivering food to all of the Suburban supermarkets. And a battery operated snowplow seems unlikely to me.
Not to mention more deaths and injuries with more VMT.
Best Hopes for far fewer VMT,
Alan
" it is a minimum of 35 years till the North American electrical grid could be 100% non-GHG (and even then a lot of nuke)."
So, on a personal or public policy level, one just has to ensure that PHEV/EV power comes from renewables. Not hard - some utilities allow specifying the source of one's power. Now, in the case of the OP we're talking about farmers, who could install wind or PV.
We should note that PHEV/EV charging at night would greatly support the expansion of wind power.
Now, if you really want to supply one's own clean power: if the additional mileage of living in the suburbs is 6,000 miles, that's 1,200 KWH to power a PHEV/EV, or about 1 KW of PV on one's roof. That would cost abou $8,000 for free driving for life, or perhaps $800 per year. Pretty cheap.
"more energy to sustain Suburbia. "
There are just as many delivery people and police per capita on the streets in the city.
"Hard to visualize battery trucks capable of delivering food to all of the Suburban supermarkets. And a battery operated snowplow seems unlikely to me."
Not hard to visualize at all.
The two questions for which I don't have answers are "Asphalt & concrete for more roads ", and safety.
My research suggests that asphalt & concrete are of comparable cost, lifecycle wise. Concrete seems to have a much lower oil component and a much longer lifespan, but have high CO2 emissions from cement production. I suspect there are substitutes that haven't got much attention in the age of extremely cheap oil - how good is rubberized asphalt?
On safety: no question that rail is better - it's my choice. Others seem to be willing to brave the risks of personal transportation...
I would emphasize that for a long time to come, Nick, it will still be a function of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Every 'Gas mile' that we can drop out of our weekly habits opens that fuel up for being part of the 'ever-dwindling remainder', which will hopefully move towards the sectors that have no alternates yet..
If someone does have Solar and Wind charged electric transport, great, go crazy (but in reality, they probably are watching their miles pretty closely) .. but aside from that, 'Driving' really still means burning some form of Petroleum distillate, maybe with some BioPetrol mixed into it.. but you're still using gas. It's about getting that machine whittled way, way down.
"I would emphasize that for a long time to come, Nick, it will still be a function of robbing Peter to pay Paul. "
There will be several PHEV's in 2009/10.
Biodiesel drives me nuts. Professionally and personally. At work (I'm a land use planner) it gets touted as an answer, a solution or at least better than big oil. Meanwhile we go about doing business as usual in terms of land use planning and permitting, which means basically continuing our auto-dependant sprawl through the construction of far flung residences, offices and stores. Or in a nod to all things green, we squish some of the more interesting retail and housing projects together, slap some solar PV panels on them, call them mixed use and environmentally friendly, nevermind the fact that most folks still have to drive TO them and the retailers dependent on that 5000 mile global supply chain. It's ALL greenwashing.
Personally it irritates me how people chat up the stuff, like my neighbors that own the local biodiesel outfit in town, like they are saving the world by burning only the "green stuff" while they go about driving their admittedly less stinky SUVs around town. Again behavior...some of the biodieselers I know will drive their vehicles to multiple destinations that are all a leisurely five minute walk or bike rides away in walkable or semiwalkable areas. They just keep doing because they still can.
How about doing something really green instead of green washed? Like simply not driving
Or hanging laundry. Or making things by hand.
Or learning how to converse with people without a television present.
Or, god forbid, taking a close look at the world before deciding to bring more humans into it.
The cancer of greenwashing runs deep, and has symbiotic help from other cancers.
One way to identify typical magnitudes and costs of inputs for crops in a region is to locate the state agricultural extension enterprise budgets produced by the state extension agricultural economists. These represent typical costs for that commodity for the region and are intended to provide a comparison basis for farmers to see how they are doing and to make choices. These vary considerably in detail so you may have to search to find one that includes the fuel amounts per acre for the farming operations.
For example, one of the hits from Googling "soybean crop enterprise budget" is a rather complete Excel spreadsheet for no-till, Roundup-ready soybeans in Ohio
Soybean Production Budget
I gotta a believe that in 20 years people will look back and laugh at the misguided efforts being made today tweaking automobiles to be less damaging to our world. The writing is on the wall, get out of your cars if you want to keep this world as we know it. Nothing less than this will truely matter in the long. This conversation is a reflection of our inability to come to grips with the reality in which we find ourselves, and that is without a radical drop in our energy use, we will have no hope for any kind of adequate future. Continuing to invest in automobiles (requiring massive amounts of energy in their manufacture and ongoing business model) is a very large symptom of the disease we share.