Back to the Future

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal's Environmental blog "Environmental Capital" ran a post discussing a new type of vehicle featured at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show in January. "Flex-fuel." As the name would imply, these cars can run on either ethanol, petroleum or a mix, I believe. According to the blog, GM hopes to make half of its production "flex-fuel" by 2012.

2012. I find myself asking again what the future will look like...
Who will be running for re-election; will there still be snow storms like the one we had last night...

As a total aside, I was watching "Meet the Robinsons" last night with my kids. It's such a sweet movie -- one of the best parts of it is the idea of a rejected orphan looking into the future and seeing huge happy playful family. May our futures be happy... At any rate, I started wondering how much of my theory of time -- of how everything in time is linked inexorably and every tiny thing leads to the present -- a theory that gives me much peace -- I wonder how much of my philosophy of time and faith in the past has to do with growing up with shows like "Star Trek" and "The Twilight Zone" I watched with my dad when I was really little -- and later movies like "Back to the Future" and "Groundhog Day..." Charles Dickens must have really shocked people in his day.

I digress.

First of all -- "Flex-fuel" cars fulfill all requirements of being a hybrid vehicle despite the fact that they need never run on anything but petroleum. Loophole much?

Also necessary -- Right now, ethanol isn't widely available enough to count on. Jane Huckabee owns a "Flex-fuel" car -- but can't find corn oil anywhere...

Furthermore, when you do find ethanol, the $.40 or so savings per gallon is canceled out by a possible mpg reduction of over 25%, according to a December story in the Times.

Some of this argument has to do with the pursuit of ethanol as a monetary relief. $1/gallon ethanol is shimmering on the lips of the future...

And then there are the environmental warnings... in the last year many stories have been written about the environmental dangers of growing corn enough for real fuel consumption -- and the pressure on food production -- of ethanol.

Even if we give car companies the most sympathetic of motives -- that they really do want to be part of the solution and are trying to be flexible moving forward to adapt to changes as they might arise... even then we've got issues.

Maybe part of it is that groups with different motivations coming at one problem for entirely different reasons are linked in an unnatural way...

Money and the environment.

If some people are looking for an alternative to petroleum based solely on price -- and others are looking for an alternative based on the environmental situation the use of petroleum worsens -- can those people really work together without the needs of one group ultimately outweighing the other.

Does investment on future promise eliminate our being able to really look around to see what's not working as we go -- do we get into a track we can't find our way out of through momentum...

If the only real purpose of finding a new energy source is to save money we need a time machine to look at that future... the air, the water, the fields...


The Twilight Zone Gallery at SCIFI.com