The biggest problem facing the planet today is
overpopulation. From this stems all our other problems; pollution, shortage of
food and water, and unemployment.
Shortage of oil is a cry that is expounded by the oil
companies. Since the early `70s they have used it to advocate their demands for
higher prices. The gouging by the oil barrons has led the populace to seek
other forms of transportation.
One such alternate form is the all-electric car. Once the
battery companies release the batteries that will allow a full size passenger
van to run many; miles, and hours, between short charge-ups the oil companies
will wake up. When oil plummets on the stock market and the shareholders vote
the CEOs out of office they will realize that they carried their hoax too far.
Many believe that this is a good thing. Payback.
However, the laying off of million-dollar-salaried
executives is only the tip of an ice berg. The thousands of people around the
world who are employed in the oil industry; exploration companies, drill rig crews, refinery employees,
tank truck drivers, service station employees, to name but a few, will also
find themselves out of work
Yet this too, is but the tip of an ice berg. The larger ice
berg is the automotive industry.
One normally thinks of the auto industry as the big plants of:
Ford,
or GMC,
in N. America; Daimler, or Volvo,
in Europe; Nissan,
or Mitsubishi,
in the Orient. Again the tip of an
ice berg.
Look below the surface and you will find the millions of
workers in the small plants all over the world. The people who; design, build, ship, and warehouse all the
little pieces required to make a non electric car operate efficiently; fans, fan
belts, heaters, heater hoses, hose clamps, antifreeze, radiators, radiator
caps. The list goes on and so does the unemployment.
When electric cars become efficient, and affordable, the
world will flock to their sales lot. It won’t take years to happen, it will
happen over night. The cars, as we
know them today, will have no trade in value and will be abandoned on the side
of the street.
Everywhere, in every country, little plants will close down
and people will become unemployed, with no pension plan, and no nest egg set
aside. All governments will become burdened with welfare cases and most of them
will collapse for lack of funds to support their citizens.
ARNIE HAD THE ANSWER
During his pre-election campaign Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he would
arrange for hydrogen to be readily available for cars, throughout California,
to switch from gasoline.
Of course this never happened, but it should have.
Not only is hydrogen a nonpolluting fuel, if manufactured,
and supplied, by the big oil companies it would mean their continued existence,
services stations would still be required, as would fuel tankers, and
refineries. But more importantly
so would all the other thousands of employees who are directly, and indirectly,
involved in the manufacture and maintenance of the internal combustion engine.
As much as I would run out and buy a new van if it was of
sufficient size to actually do some work and was capable of running for hours,
and miles, on a battery charge, I would, for the sake of the world economy,
much rather see the oil companies offer us an inexpensive, non-polluting
alternative.
