Interesting article from Treehugger this morning. As acceptance that oil supplies are finite begins to sink in, the debate could soon become HOW to use the remaining reserves of relatively affordable fossil fuels.--M. Power
If there is one lesson to be learned from the designers, thinkers and curators presenting at Conversations in Design: A World Without Oil, it is the fact that we need the stuff for a lot of uses far more important than pushing boxes of steel around on roads.
When one realizes that we are using a cubic mile of the stuff every year (that is the Eiffel Tower on the right for scale), it becomes pretty obvious that this isn't going to continue forever, and we have to begin to think about what we are going to use it for.
The amount of oil consumed each year is shown in the center. There's only so much to go around. Should we be using it to move individuals around in cars made with thousands of pounds of materials?
When you realize what we would have to build to replace the energy from all that oil, like building four dams the size of the Three Gorges Dam, 52 nuclear power plants or 104 coal fired power plants every year it becomes obvious that switching to Tesla Roadsters and plug-in hybrids is not going to make very much of a difference.
READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
Posted: 2/1/2010 8:52:11 AM by
Matt Power | with 0 comments