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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Once again, today's youth loudly proclaimed that the answer to our problems lies in efficiency, not ethanol.
A group of High Schoolers beat out over 250 college students in a Shell competition to build the most efficient car.
This competition is yet another example that we already have all the technologies we need to fix much of our little 'carbon problem'. If a bunch of high schoolers can build a 2,843 mpg car, I'm pretty sure giant corporate car manufacturers can figure out how to reach 30 mpg by 2020 (our current fuel efficiency goal and Europe's present standard).
The government needs to stop lavishing Archer Daniel Midland, Cargill, Peabody, Massey, Ford, GM, Chrysler and other traditional corporate overlords with research money for ethanol, advanced coal, and nuclear waste disposal. It is time that the government invest in technology deployment and forcing corporations to stop wining and adopt the most recent efficient technologies.
This switch from R&D to technology deployment will have widespread effects, from drastically and quickly reducing our Greenhouse Gasses to reducing the financial burden on low income families due to increases in energy prices.
So-called "Generation Q" is leading, will our predecessors follow our leadership and enthusiasm or will they continue in their own path leading to our doom?
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You want something actually meaningful? Check out the Progressive Automotive X Prize Link
Oh, and your using this competition (the parameters of which you don't quite seem to understand) as a basis for arguing that we should not to be investing in cleaner, safer nuclear power technology is silly at best.
Recent studies keep on showing that GHG reductions are negligible, it is not cost competitive, takes too long too deploy and regardless of how safe, will always be a security threat.
So how can we motivate a gamble on the future of the planet to continue favoring wealthy proponents of this failed technology?
Oooh, was almost forgetting, as most people do, all the indigenous populations that are seeing their ancestral lands and future assets devastated by one of the most toxic forms of mining in our planet (topped only by Mountaintop Removal). Yeah, lets go for nuclear and perpetuate this system of environmental racism and economic disparity.
Won't even respond to your car points that totally miss the point of the article.
As to the ensuing ignorant comment on the failures of the abovementioned technology, Thomas Alva Edison, arguably the greatest inventor of the modern age, claimed "I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work”.