This post is almost perfectly on target. Ethanol and other biofuels put transportation in competition with food production. Since there is only a limited amount of land, it also encourages a complete takeover of all land for farming. In Brazil, more rainforest is being clear cut to grow sugar cane for ethanol.

I think there is a point though that is being missed from the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" The point is that in this case, they actually delivered a viable electric car, the EV-1. It was successful. It worked. It worked so well Japan followed the U.S. for a change, and built an electric RAV4.

In fact, Japanese auto makers were so worried that the U.S. was winning the race to electric cars that they developed the technology for the electric portion of the Prius. So, where are these great American electric vehicles? On the scrap heap. Where are the hybrids using this great technology? They've never been built.

The "big 3" US auto makers are toast- their products are not very innovative and they have sunk too many resources into SUVs and other gas guzzlers, blah, blah, blah. The market demand will help dictate the type of cars made. I think foreign auto makers tend to make a much better product anyway so it's a mute point. Don't buy American crap cars. Even a non-hybrid, compact car is better than all the big SUVs people drive. Yes, the automakers are at fault for pushing gas guzzlers onto consumers. The real dummies are the people buying them! If you don't buy the big Hummer, the comapanies will stop making them. But no, soccer moms and insecure men will continue to buy them. Such cars empitomize the stereotype of the big fat arrogant American. I hate the people driving around in Hummers- I wish I had an IED / rocket launcher everytime I see one.

The one problem with your argument is that there are few decent cars from which to choose. A coworker needed a car with a minimum of 6 seats for carpooling. The best she could do was a Mercedes diesel wagon at 31-35 mpg. It sounds halfway decent, but only by the standards in the U.S.

I drove an SUV (actually genuinely required) in Belize. It got 40 mpg and made it through 50 yard long tracks of knee deep mud. I don't drive an SUV in this country because I never ever encounter anything like that. Even back icy roads to ski slopes are easy for front wheel drive to navigate.

So, what was this great SUV that got better gas mileage than most compact cars in the U.S.? A Daihatsu Terios with a 1.3 liter engine and an automatic transmission.

It must've been horribly underpowered, you might say. But, it had no trouble up or down on terribly maintained dirt roads. It also had no trouble on highways. Here's a little known (or cared about) secret:

You don't need a lot of horsepower to go off-road.

A low first gear ratio is enough. You also rarely need 4 wheel drive. It should be off until needed. High ground clearance is needed if you really drive off-road. But, I see all the Humpers, Naggravators, Land Bruisers, Path Grinders, etc. in NEW YORK CITY!! There is probably not an unpaved road for a hundred miles. And, I'm sure a prius will get through the few within 200 miles without hassle.

Oh, and soccer moms: SUVs are horribly unsafe, especially for children, who fare particularly badly in rollover crashes.

After reading much of what has been posted here, I am prompted to respond with a few questions and opinionated comments of my own on my impression of the lemming-like slant, attitude, and logic of so much rhetoric I see espoused here.

Has anyone here ever heard of the Ice Age? Do you know that some 20,000 years ago the earth began an irratic warming trend that has continued to today? Obviously this phenomenon began long before the advent of this century of industrial pollution. Could an over-abundance of methane in the farts of dinasaurs have caused the freezing, and could have the mastadon population produced enough decomposing feces to begin the warming trend that began melting the glaciers away?

Wouldn't it have been marvelous had these creatures possessed a human level of intelligence? Given the kind of diligence, insightfulness, understanding, and great intellect exhibited in the article's here, I am certain they could have preserved their completely frozen envoirment for our enjoyment today.

Seriously, the Earth is a living entity, as a part of it, humans are no more than e-coli. We will try to adjust just as any parasitic bacterial organism changes to its host......and we humans will always have far less impact on the ever-changing earth and universe than your smug egos will ever admit. Stop hating the life around you just long enough to let some common sense seek in. Then, actually DO SOMETHING. Plant a tree. (anywhere) They remove carbon dioxide and emitt oxygen . Get one indigenant to your area from your state conservation/forestry dept., or the Arbor Day Foundation.

JLR
starnetlasvegas.com

Hemp would power all our energy needs using less than 10% of the nation's farmland, almost 15% of which lies fallow. Hemp is also one of the few plants that replenishes the soil as it grows. And it's not as if it will take years to develop the techne--Henry Ford bult a hemp car in 1936, which was behind the movement to criminalize cannabis. You can read more about it at hemp4fuel.com. I'll also add an essay to my website in coming days that details the history and the possible uses of this amazing plant--kept illegal at the urging of companies like ExxonMobil, General Motors and Johnson & Johnson, whose profits would be threatened by a decriminilzation of cannabis for industrial and medicinal use.

JAMES L. RAYFIELD,

When you quote such information, first check the sources on scholar.google.com. When someone creates a website, they can say anything they want, with no confirmation and no oversight. When someone publishes a peer-reviewed article, they must convince other scientists that they at least have a valid point based on real data. All else is, to put it mildly, crap. If you do not wish to read true scientific papers, at least watch the popular press articles for the names of the pubs from which they are paraphrasing and note whether they are peer reviewed. Peer review is truly the key to all of this.

Patrick William Horn,

Please post a link to your source. It is the second time I have seen that posted on a blog with no corroborating link. I had heard that the total amount of all farmland in this country, if devoted to corn, would produce 10-20% of our fuel needs. I find it hard to believe that it would be a multiple orders of magnitude improvement to switch to hemp. Thanks.

I did include a link to a corroborating source (hemp4fuel.com), but perhaps you need some better links:
http://www.hempcar.org/hempfacts.shtml#one
http://www.jackherer.com/chapter09.html
http://fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRGRV3.htm

I tried posting links but it didn't work out...I misplaced a couple of the links I originally sent, so this will have to do. Here's a second attempt:

http://www.hempcar.org/hempfacts.shtml
http://fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRGRV3.htm
http://www.jackherer.com/chapter09.html