October 14, 2008 by Rob.

It’s time for another Blog Action Day post.  This year’s topic is poverty and I wanted to skip the obvious petroleum-poverty arguments and find another link between electric vehicles and poverty.

As an idealist, I’m taking the high ground that people would life themselves out of poverty if they could work.  And they would work if they could get to work.  I believe that lack of transportation or highly inconvenient transportation is a major contributor to global poverty.

If EVs dominated the world then:

• we’d have effective wide area public transportation because EV range limitations require infrastructure for long trips.
• there would be less suburban sprawl so housing would be convenient, affordable, and dense.
• our air would be cleaner and poor people would have healthier air to breathe
• cities would be quieter
• poor people could buy fuel based on time of use and trade convenience for savings
• cars would be more reliable and easier to maintain

Carbon powered transportation increases poverty because our societies consistently make “cheap & easy” choices that stack the deck against the poor.

Posted in ICE Cars, Commentary, Rants, Blogroll | 2 Comments »

July 20, 2008 by Rob.

The Plugs and Cars blog posted this “funny” video so I wanted to pass it along.

[embedded object removed…follow the link]

Posted in ICE Cars, Blogroll | 2 Comments »

June 9, 2008 by Rob.

I’ve been resisting feeling the pull to comment more and more about non-EV topics on this blog.  To be true to this blog’s content and (imagined) readership, I’ve decided to start TribalGrid, a new blog, focused on broader social energy and sustainability topics.

I’m re-coining the term “social energy” to describe technology and attitudes that help people see energy as a limited community resource.  I believe that solving problems in our near-term future will require a deep change in public thinking about how we consume energy.

The blog has been in stealth mode since Earth Day so there are already some fresh rants for your enjoyment.

Posted in Commentary, Alternate Fuels, Rants, Blogroll, Storyline, EV Tech | No Comments »

January 31, 2008 by Rob.

The World Economic Summit was in Davos.  I had the surreal experience of being a staffer at the amazing Nobelity Project Gala and watching a movie made by the Pipkins that was simultaneously screened at Davos.  The interesting thing about the gala was that because of the film, people are very conscious that their actions create ripples that effect change.  A major premise of the Nobelity movie is small actions leading to large results.

So it was surprising to read Apophenia’s blog that business people in Davos were relatively clueless about the ripple effect of their (in)action:

“… Another thing about Davos was that it became painfully clear that most business people are unaware of their role in the system. The conversations of the conference were heavily focused on environmentalism, inequality, terrorism, and doing good to solve the world’s problems. What I found was that many powerful people desperately want to help solve these problems but they seem unaware of their role in perpetuating some of the ills. It was weird… I couldn’t tell if such folks were clueless or delusional. I still need to chew on this a bit more. But it was fascinating to see that most businesspeople at Davos genuinely believed that they could help the world. … “

Posted in Blogroll, Green Tech | No Comments »