Energy Bad Habits
Here are a few of my ideas and comments regarding climate change. You may think these are radical and abrupt, but I feel that our U.S. leadership and most Americans are still "asleep" when it comes to our climate. I feel we had a good taste of climate change this past summer – the second major hurricane to hit Central America is still ongoing as I write this.
Americans have developed many "bad habits" dealing with energy that are hard to break. Our economy is like a giant monster that lives and breathes on gasoline, diesel fuel and electricity, and belches out toxic pollutants that affect the entire world. We are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, polluters on earth!
One of our biggest “bad habits” is the AUTOMOBILE.
For the past 100+ years now, Americans have thrived on auto racing. The INDY 500 now draws several hundred thousand spectators. If you do the math for gasoline consumption for the participants and spectators combined, it is well over several million gallons of gasoline consumed. Since each gallon consumed equates to around 19 pounds of CO2 emissions on average, this equals several thousand tons of CO2 produced for just this one event. During the summer there are many major auto races across the country. So, the total CO2 produced is well into the million-ton range. All that for the "excitement" and "thrill" of speed, and maybe seeing a big burning wreck! You may say "it's a money maker for our economy." Well, if that is true, we are indeed in trouble.
Joliet has three racing venues: Chicagoland Speedway, Route 66 Raceway, and the Autobahn (named after the famous speed-limitless highway in Germany). In my opinion, if our country is serious about climate change, then all three of these venues must be shut down immediately. Auto racing is a cancer for our climate and one of our major bad habits. But it's not just track racing. It's tractor pull contests, mud racing, dirt track racing, off-road rock climbing, etc. There are dozens of different racing classifications in this country alone. Don't forget the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah! We Americans set a bad example for the rest of the world on how to waste energy. But that's not all. There are big boat racing events and even airplane racing. They all need to go if we are serious about climate change. Americans glorify the winner of NASCAR races. We make heroes out of the winners. Instead, we need to see them as villains and not heroes.
Electric cars are the cure, you may say. Well, let's take a look at history. We damaged the environment to mine coal. We damaged the environment to extract oil. We are producing tons of nuclear waste from nuke plants every year, and several plants have had major disasters. We are now damaging the environment with fracking. We have damaged the environment mining minerals (the Animas River in Colorado turned orange, remember that event). And now we intend to damage the environment to mine and purify lithium for electric car batteries.
We need to step in and make several important changes to the automobile and how it is driven. Limit the speedometer range to 90 MPH. Why do we need the speedometer to go from 0 to 140, or 160, or even to 200 MPH on some cars? WHY? Every week I read about someone caught driving well over 100 MPH in the Chicago area. I have a collection of newspaper articles detailing some individuals driving 150 MPH and a few even faster. In October, an attempt was made in the Nevada desert to drive 300 MPH in a “hypercar” (an extreme high performance vehicle) just for the record!
Why do manufacturers make cars with 1000 HP engines and some even bigger? These engines are gas wasters. Limit the horsepower to no more than 250 HP, and even that may be excessive.
Put a governor on the engines of ALL cars sold in the U.S., so the speed can never go above 85 MPH. We should also drop the speed limit on the interstate highways back down to 65 MPH, or perhaps even lower to save energy. Ten years ago, several individuals in the Chicago area complained that the speed limit was too low due to the fact that almost everyone was going well over the speed limit. These individuals had no clue what effect raising the speed limit does to gas mileage. The faster you go in a car, the lower your miles per gallon is. You are pushing more air out of the way in the same period of time. For example, if you can get 35 mpg at 50 MPH, you may only get 25 mpg at 70 MPH.
How many of you have heard about the Cannonball Run?
“The Cannonball Run is an unsanctioned speed record, typically accepted to run from New York City's Red Ball Garage to the Portofino Hotel in Los Angeles, a distance of about 2,800 mi (4,500 km). As of August 2020, the record is 25 hours 29 minutes, with a top speed of 175 mph and an average speed of 110 mph, driven by Arne Toman and Doug Tabbutt."
The Cannonball Run is done on our interstate highways no less, just for the thrill of it. How many hundreds of gallons of gas and tons of CO2 are produced for this one gas-wasting event? This goes on every year. And there are probably tens of thousands of Americans who are drooling to break that record.
I will finish up with comments about ADVERTISING.
Every day on TV, on the radio, and on the internet, I see and hear ads for automobile sales that show speeding, roaring, spinning wheels, burning rubber, doing burnouts, and in some cases splashing through a stream. All this to sell gas-wasting cars. Splashing through a stream is an environmental sin!
To see this for real, all you have to do is drive out to Pilcher Park on Joliet's east side. Come in through the west entrance from Rt 30. As you approach the park about a mile in from Rt 30, there is a large parking lot on the right, between the road and Hickory Creek. You will notice "burn out" spirals on the pavement. Someone with a high horsepower car with nothing else to do but spin the wheels and burn rubber on the parking lot pavement, damaging public property set aside for the enjoyment of all. And if you can't make it to the park, all you have to do is go to Google earth maps (just search for Pilcher Park) to see a satellite view of the park. The burn out trails are actually visible from space!
Tire marks on pavement and adjoining grass at Pilcher Park Nature Center in Joliet, Illinois.
(Image courtesy of Google Earth)
How does this happen? It is a failure of our society. It is a failure of parenting. It is a failure of our community standards. It is a failure of our schools. It is a failure of our leadership. It is a failure of our business culture.
Thumbnail/banner image by Benjamin Green on Shutterstock