Planet Gore on National Review Online
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman Sunday pines for billionaire-friendly central planning on energy so that his green dreams might be forced down our collective throats:
“If only we had a Congress and president who. . . just sat down with Boone (Pickens). . . and asked one question: 'What laws do we need to enact to foster 1,000 more like you?' Then just do it, and get out of the way.”
Laws mandating “green” schemes? Just do it. Market economics? Get out of the way.
Specifically, what Friedman and his buddy T. Boone want is “a massive buildup of wind power in the U.S. and converting our abundant natural gas supplies — now being used to make electricity — into transportation fuel to replace foreign oil in our cars, buses and trucks.”
Friedman says Pickens is “motivated by American nationalism.” Well, he sure isn’t motivated by making a competitive car.
Automakers have been trying to get the public to buy natural gas vehicles since the 1970s. Yet, despite millions in tax subsidies, today there is only one — count them: one — -compressed-natural-gas (CNG) product in America’s showrooms. It’s the Honda Civic GX and it ain’t exactly flying off the shelves.
No wonder. The CNG-powered Civic GX sells at a whopping $8,780 over the price of a comparable gas-powered Civic DX, yet has 24 percent less horsepower, is 2 seconds slower 0-60 mph, has half the trunk size (due to the huge CNG tank behind the back seats), and only goes 250 miles on a tank of natural gas vs. 400 for its petrol-powered sister.
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2 comments:
So what. There could be more of these cleaner burning cars fueling for less than $2.00 per gallon. The CNG versions of the Crown Victoria, Contour, Sierra pick up and others were made until just recently. Hundreds of conversion shops were forced to closed less than 10 years ago because the big three auto makers refused to share their emission control technology and a subversion of the engine emissions laws made converters subject to penalties for "tampering with emission control devises". CNG should be used as a transportation fuel. T Boone and some of us poor folks know this. Get hip.
I think the Pickens plan is a great one. Natural gas is 2/3rds cleaner burning than gasoline, it burns cooler and is better for the engines. I grew up on a farm and we have been using natural gas to fuel our pickups and tractors for over 30 years. In the pickups we had installed a small switch on the dash that switches between gasoline and natural gas operation. It was a very simple conversion to add the ability to use natural gas and it worked great. The only reason the use of natural gas as a more primary fuel has not yet occured,is that we had cheap oil available. Now that oil prices are skyrocketing with demand, I believe natural gas is a great solution. We will surely have to continue our develoment of other alternatives, but for now this is a very viable solution.
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