Latter Day
I know that it’s completely self-involved, but I get such great pleasure from driving around this city with my biodiesel bumper stickers, knowing that I’m not contributing to that smog monster. Today I had to get to a meeting in Sherman Oaks, and as usual, the freeways were jammed. I called my roommate (who lived in LA for 30 years before moving up to Oregon) when I was passing the big Church of Latter Day Saints on Westwood and Santa Monica (the one with the golden trumpeter atop the tall spire) to moan about the traffic, and he reminded me of the mass transportation that exists in Los Angeles — people do take the bus and subway to work here, and city officials are doing their best to encourage more people to utilize these. Of course, I then started imagining monorails and sky-trams, — like the old ones that used to go through the Matterhorn at Disneyland — solar-powered hovercrafts conducted by magnetically suspended traffic lights 40 feet up in the air (okay, maybe the magnet traffic light idea isn’t so well-thought-out). Which made the drive go a lot faster. In a couple of EnergyRush interviews I’ve conducted, I asked the subject: “What do you see in the Best Possible Future?” most of the answers involved mass-transit systems or simply living close enough to work that you can walk. Okay, I’ll just throw the glove down: I will personally give $100 to the first person who invents a no-emissions teleportation machine with a 500-mile range. Please note that that offer is exactly 1,000 times the dime-prize we got as kids for being the first person to spot the Matterhorn and its sky-trams from the Freeway.
–Refined gOil
November 10th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I’m not sure why someone would think that driving a biodiesel vehicle would not contribute to smog. With biodiesel fuels, smog forming hydrocarbon emissions are 35% greater, and the Nitrogen Oxide emissions are also greater than those from petroleum-based diesel. Unburned hydrocarbons and NOx are two of the biggest contributors to urban smog. Yes, the carbon footprint is less because the fuel doesn’t come from a fossil source, but from current agriculture, so the plants used to make the fuel take CO2 aout of the atmosphere and then burning it puts it right back in. However, driving an electric vehicle would make a bigger impact.(http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/big_rig_cleanup/biodiesel.html).
November 11th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Susan,
Thank you for the correction…I still have a lot to learn about biodiesel, and I’m really glad that you brought those numbers to my attention. I think that I suffer occasionally from the delusion that because I’m driving biodiesel, it’s just 100% better than petrol — and I know that’s wrong. I think I got poetically carried away, and I’ll be sure to check myself next time. Best, and thank you again,
Refined gOil