Ever since the dawn of chemicals in 1965 we have been treated to an unending stream of their benefits, so much so that one could wonder how even rudimentary life was possible prior to their discovery.
And yet somehow easily producible byproducts of decomposing plant vegetation are a vile thing when burned to provide useful energy for the production and movement of materials and products. So then yes, let us focus on eliminating fossil fuels instead of reducing our chemical dependency issues… who is dreaming this stuff up anyway?
It’s as if someone was busily burning your house to the ground whilst lecturing you on the proper means of removing dandelions from your lawn! And while there might be some benefits to be gained from certain battery operated contraptions, perhaps going wildly overboard on the issue may prove to be a large expensive booboo?
I use a Stihl electric chainsaw and a battery operated one as well in my commercial firewood operation and they are fantastic. I love how they always start with one trigger pull and how I have to buy and mix zero gas.
I recently got to ride a customers electric bicycle and believe they make a whole lot of sense and if I lived in a city instead of logging in the bush for a living I would certainly own one, and probably even ditch my ice vehicle too while I’m at it.
I also understand that displacing the pollution of producing electricity to a place away from populated areas makes sense, particularly in Beijing or Frankfurt.
Butt…. can we be a little bit realistic or is realism currently out the Overton window along with common sense and the nuclear family? Certainly it is at least for now, a little bit ridiculous to suggest that all agriculture, mining, manufacturing, trucking and killing cute little baby seals can go on unimpeded by running everything everywhere on double a batteries or whatever, using lithium or not! It’s been suggested that a gallon of diesel can produce the work of 70 to 80 manhours, or 700 government employees!
Imagine 70 men or 700 government staff pulling a semi full of logs up a mountainside in slushy rain and you get the picture of the value of diesel fuel…wonderful stuff though cursed by nearly every polite ician on the planet!
So before we all run ahead with this ingenius idea, maybe let’s just fast forward using what the Germans call vorsichte and see where we end up shall we?
It’s 2028 and burning fossil fuel or wood or cigars is now illegal so we have all resorted to living underground where temperature extremes are moderated. However, the cities are empty and we have all become hunter gatherers and agrarian types because instead of having food and essentials brought to the city, the people have had to go to the resources, much as their HG forepeoples had to do centuries earlier.
It has not been a total loss because people have rediscovered home dentistry and self healing through home amputation and fireplace cauterization of festering wounds. Children have rediscovered playing outdoors in squishy mudpuddles and birds sing sweetly in the trees, free of “aerosol contamination indicative of combustion” Data/Startrek.
Yeah, maybe it won’t be so bad after all…come to think of it. Let us all eet zee bugzz… It vill be good vor der environmental.
Skulltripper 