Hundreds of world leaders recently went to the Copenhagen climate-change conference to address climate change caused by CO2 emissions. But once the conference was over, they all went home and kept on driving their petroleum-powered, pollution-producing cars. If I may, I have a better idea that I’d like to share with you.
The energy of the sun is so massive that in just one second, it produces more energy than what we humans have ever produced. We now have the technology to harvest that pollution-free energy by using solar panels. We also have very good batteries in which to store it. So why don’t we now have many millions of solar-powered cars, plus many millions of batteries using that free pollution-free energy harvested from the sun? The concept is so simple! It’s a mystery as to why a massive infrastructure for having solar-powered electric cars isn’t already in place. As you might agree, the pollution-free “electric automotive era” should have arrived long ago.
The stumbling block again appears to be the unwise idea that the owners of each battery-powered car should each own and recharge their own batteries with and within disabled cars and wait far too long while batteries are getting recharged with electricity coming too often from coal-fired electric plants that are belching thousands of tons of pollution into our atmosphere.
Why must motorists each own those batteries? Could they not lease them instead? Might they then not be able to quickly exchange them at service stations when discharged? And couldn’t those big leased batteries be recharged with solar panels if owned by a colossal consortium made up of huge international corporations dedicated to finally bringing about the pollution-free “electric automotive era?”
The profits to be made by the leasing, exchanging and recharging of such big batteries would be enormous! Once the infrastructure would be set up for millions of cars, plus millions of universal-sized batteries made to be quickly exchangeable at service stations everywhere and then recharged using solar panels at special locations, the money would keep on rolling in! Millions of cars could keep rolling on without waiting while their batteries are getting recharged.
Because “hybrids” are petroleum-powered polluters too, they’re also not the answer to putting an end to global warming and climate change. Scientists are telling us that the time to act is now for the future of our planet. Aren’t we smart enough to finally produce cars powered by batteries recharged by pollution-free solar energy?
Since the world’s finite oil supply will be gone within a few decades, wouldn’t the huge oil corporations be wise to get into the “big battery business” as soon as possible? As part of a colossal consortium of corporations to bring about the “electric automotive era,” they’d make billions of dollars by harvesting, storing and then selling pollution-free solar energy to millions of motorists. And the price of that energy should be much cheaper than gas.
Lease them; use them; quickly switch them when discharged; pay the “recharging fee;” and then get going again in less time than it now takes to get a tank of gas! That’s how batteries to power electric cars should be used! Motorists would suffer no darned waiting while the batteries would be recharged with solar panels at special locations by the colossal consortium owning and leasing them out to you! As a motorist would you then need to care it if might take two hours or two days to recharge the leased battery you left behind after having had it replaced at a service station? The “quick recharge panic” would be over, and God willing, so might “global warming” by “gas guzzlers.”
Richard G. Nobert, Morinville
