The Position Makers

not sure if anyone’s seen the article in the NYTimes today.

here’s the gist:

The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.

This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed cycle — equal amounts of carbon dioxide emitted and removed — would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.

this sounds pretty interesting but let’s not forget about all the CO2 we’ve released and left in the atmosphere.

But to stabilize carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would require drastic cuts in emissions, and similar solutions do not exist for small, mobile sources of carbon dioxide. Nuclear and solar-powered cars do not seem plausible anytime soon.

i’m definitely all about reducing emissions from cars and trucks.  unfortunately, the real problem i have with this type of suggestion is that it doesn’t solve external problems caused by cars and trucks:  roads and suburbia.

besides the ecological impact from habitat fragmentation and strip mining, we have bloated homes and suburban areas where nobody knows one another and nobody walks the streets.  there’s so much attention to building green homes and buildings that i’m getting sick thinking about the hot air being pumped up american-asses about how we’re going to fix this problem.  it’s not enough to fix the buildings–that’s great, don’t get me wrong–but, we need to fix attitudes addressing how we move our body-masses around.

i’m lucky enough to live in a city with plenty of “stuff” in walking distance and an amazing public-transportation system to boot.  when i didn’t live in sf, i had to find creative alternatives to the car (because i’m a tree-hugger like that); not being too creative i used to walk and ride my bike a lot.  ;-)  sometimes i would ride a bike to the grocery store but i mostly walked.  and what’s wrong with that?  well, it seems for the average person we don’t have time to walk or ride bikes.  (well, we do; we’re just not willing or able to allocate the extra few minutes it takes to walk or bike).  so what needs to change?

how we design cities.

unfortunately, we as a people continually insist on moving out further, getting our own piece of the pie.  i can’t really blame everyone for that either; it’s loud in the city.  cars and loud trucks bouncing along roads, horns and sirens blaring, etc.  cars are great for getting around in a hurry but they feed into an all too human tendency:  laziness.  extreme laziness.

it’s really too bad because our entire growth from the 1950s through now has been very suburban-centirc.  we definitely need to make some major shifts toward different social organization structures but i would worry this type of move would not be good for the economy in the short-term and will definitely meet a lot of head-wind resistance.  there are many forms of vested interest in areas like phoenix and las vegas where “spreading out” was the driving force for regional growth, and still is.  (from gas stations and grocery stores to insurance franchises and home depots).  hopefully, with the housing bubble deflating and a bit of sanity returning to people’s perspective on home-investment, we can get a bit more re-evaluation of our housing and city-design priorities.

we’ve really created a silly predicament for ourselves:  continue to depend on suburban areas to house our people, using roads and autos as our main trasnportaiton method furthering our laziness and ego-centric perspective on the world (you have noticed how people act as soon as they get behind the wheel right?  it’s almost as if once we sit in the driver seat a demon takes over our body and pysche making us all really stupid and really impatient).  we also have suburbia to thank for bigger homes and increased energy consumption in the home–it’s not all computer use!   OR we can move to more compact development and walking-cities but leaving deserted ghost towns as relics of a by-gone era.  not much of a choice.

it’s really going to come down to people coming to terms with our actions not being as justified as we think them.  we need to change minds…lots of them.  some people may need to lose a lot of money in the process [gasp] for these changes to come about.  for some reason i’m a doubter…institutions and “customs” don’t change very quickly.