I agree when we are given free rein to develop it and mature it before dropping it into the mainstream. The moon landings were one off’s and while they gave rise to consumer products many years later, the tech was developed as single purpose and disposable.

The problem is we are bounding the innovation by constraining the options based on emissions, if I found a CO2 free renewable grail of power but it took massive amounts of CO2 to build it, i mean in the trillions of tonnes, not going to happen is it?

There is a cycle to products that seems to be wanting to be skipped here, I think you address it in your next post.

I am going for a two fer…

Come on Now

First, you have someone who says “Hey!!! This TV picture sucks”

Yes the Innovator said it, not some environmental consumer advocate group lead by a poster of a polar bear. Plus the technology took several decades to reach the market.

Yet solar and wind are older than that and still no major innovations to solve the problems with it as a primary power source. It is not lack of money or time or even will, the issues are really that big when placed into the context of being commercially viable. Greens do not care about viability, ethanol is a prime example, they just want anything, do not even look at the real cost, just do something fast and ill-concieved and we will just fix the unintended side effects later.

I agree with you to the point that a sudden and complete shift to electric powered vehicles is impractical and ill-advised for many reasons.

My main point of argument is that fuel efficiency and alternative means of power do not and have not been given the level of focus that they perhaps deserve. EU legislation to improve vehicle efficiency is being vigorously opposed by auto manufacturers.

I use the example of a man on the moon as a case where many thought the goal to be impossible given the state of knowledge at the time, yet with the right focus there are few limits to mankind’s ingenuity.

These statements drive me crazy, we harnessed the power of fire to provide every form of energy we use today, even all the green tech gets produced by some sort of energy release from hydrocarbons or uses products derived from them in their construction. It is going to take a little longer than building a rocket powered by … wait for it… hydrocarbon fuel… manufactured with energy from coal and oil… to replace that entire energy source.

Electric cars are not new and there is no conspiracy besides the fact they have been terrible products.

With the level of fossil fuel based electrical production we have a impasse, we cannot be adding demand for electricity until we solve the generation problems from CO2 free sources.

This is a completely upside down way of looking at the problem. Just like bio-fuel the impacts of demand are being ignored because of the same drilled in logic that it is an individual who drives changes.

Innovation in Products Drive Change.

Without innovation people would still be just as happy with a regular non-HD TV, or a CRT computer monitor. Did not know we needed it until someone made it, it had benefits we liked, it filled a need like a PID [Personal Isolation Device],iPod anyone? which made the public transit experience bearable.

IMO Solve the electrical generation issue, while increasing fuel efficency in vehicles far beyond 35 mpg, I think we could have 50+ mpg world wide by 2020. Use efficency to help curb electrical demand, so that you are not playing the catch-up game with power by demanding more and more faster than can even be deployed in a realistic time frame.

If we built renewable energy sites with current technology levels non-stop we could not even keep pace with current growth demand.

Simple fact of capacity and efficency.

Demanding electric cars is going to make the energy problems worse not better. I know electricity seems like magic but it is not, and we take it far too much for granted, just wait until electricity starts lagging demand, we will see how dependent we are on energy.