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Ed Black on who killed the electric car and the electric streetcar
David Room, Hubbert Tribute
Author and investigative journalist Edwin Black speaks with David Room of the Hubbert Tribute in September 2007 about the corporate forces that have for more than a century sabotaged the creation of alternative fuel vehicles in order to get and keep us dependent on oil. He speaks of the beginnings of the electric car before the turn of the 20th century and the ultimate ascendancy of the internal combustion engine. He also discusses how GM and several other corporations conspired to dismantle the electric streetcar systems throughout the United States.
On the “solution” side, Black previews his Green Fleet initiative to combat climate change and reduce oil consumption. When asked if our present transportation problems are fixable, Black says “we don’t need to reinvent the wheel we need to excavate from where it was buried a century ago.”
Streaming audio of the interview and mp3 for download are available at Hubbert Tribute website: www.mkinghubbert.com/resources/interviews/edblack20070924
David Room of the Hubbert Tribute explains why the Tribute interviewed Black: “If we are to change the future, we absolutely need to understand past. Its not just about who stole the electric car, its about who stole the electric streetcar as well. Its about how companies have exerted monopolistic practices on customers and competitors in the energy and transportation businesses for centuries. Perhaps, most importantly, its about how the entire country embraced the internal combustion engine on almost every social, political, and economic level. These are the roots of our oil economy.” Room further stated, “Electric vehicles are just one of a number of technologies and practices that we need to reintegrate into our understanding of how to do things in the post-petroleum future.”
About the Hubbert Tribute:
The Hubbert Tribute is an online tribute to one of America’s greatest thinkers and scientists, M. King Hubbert (1903-1989). … The goal of this tribute is to raise awareness of and celebrate Hubbert’s accomplishments, so that industrial society can better understand the contemporary significance of his work. The site also seeks to illuminate a chapter of history that remains murky, that is, United States energy policy from 1900 to 2000.
(9 November 2007)
Want Better Transit? Unionize!
Erica Barnett, WorldChanging
…Recently, I asked readers at The Stranger what they would do to improve our city’s transportation system. Although many folks responded that I should just “learn to deal with it,” most had constructive, even inspiring, suggestions, including:
* More, and more frequent buses;
* Better enforcement of existing anti-harassment, fare, substance-abuse, and hygiene rules
* Loading platforms with ticketing kiosks to reduce delays
* Eliminating stops
* Eliminating the downtown ride-free zone
* Issuing tickets to riders who don’t pay
* Providing information at stops about what buses are coming next and when
All of these ideas are in place in various cities around the world, and many would be a vast improvement over Seattle’s current system. My favorite proposal, however, unites all those ideas under one umbrella: forming a transit riders union, a group that advocates for transit users and lobbies elected officials for more transit money.
Government increasingly demands that citizens view it as a business. Transit riders’ unions tell government, “Okay. Then treat us like consumers.”
Transit riders’ unions have done some amazing things: …
(9 November 2007)
Ship emissions seen causing 60,000 deaths a year
Lindsay Beck, Reuters
Emissions from ocean-going ships are responsible for about 60,000 deaths a year from heart and lung-related cancers, according to research published on Wednesday that calls for tougher fuel standards.
Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong, three of the world’s five busiest ports, were likely to suffer disproportionate impacts from ship-related emissions, said the study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
“For a long time there’s been this perception that ship emissions are out there in the ocean and they don’t really affect anyone on land and I think this study shows that this is clearly false,” said David Marshall, senior counsel at the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force, which co-commissioned the study.
(7 November 2007)
