Emissions Impossible

There is a traditional story where a number of people are holding onto an elephant in a dark room. Each has hold of a particular part of the elephant. The person holding the trunk describes an elephant as long, tube shaped, rough skinned with a breathing hole at one end. Another describes an elephant as long and thin with a hairy tassel at the end. That person is holding the tail. You get the idea. No individual is able to examine the elephant as a complete elephant, due to their limitations.

So it is that many of today’s problems are viewed by specialists in the subject, never getting a grip of the whole problem. Take car emissions as an example.

At the time of the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the level of Co2 in the atmosphere was viewed as an important means to reduce global warming through the greenhouse effect. So it was that diesel engines were favoured over petrol engines, as they produce far less Co2. Measured in terms of input / output, as petrol engine will produce 200g of Co2 / km and a diesel engine 120g of Co2 / km. (source for figures; Sadiq Khan – theconversation.com)

Twenty years on the problem is viewed from a different angle. City mayors have highlighted the large numbers of deaths associated with or resulting from, respiratory diseases. When the debate on diesel or petrol cars is considered from this angle, petrol cars produce 30% less nitrogen oxides than diesel cars without filters, that is the older diesel vehicles such as buses and taxis.

So the description of the elephant ( that is the problem ) has changed. The problem would be different again if viewed from the point of view of particulates in emissions or nitrous oxide or nitrogen dioxide. So the debate can ramble on all the time missing the whole problem- in our analogy, what does the elephant look like?

The observers will not consider the whole problem until the question is asked, ‘how do we get rid of the internal combustion engine?’ – for that is clearly the real problem.

For many years it has been possible to run buses and taxis on compressed air – the emissions from which are, well, air.

The first cars of the 19^th century were electric cars but the technology, patent payoffs and markets, forced the world to adopt the internal combustion engine using fossil fuels.

Technology and markets are now, once again, creating change in a way that governments have been comparatively powerless or inept to bring about. Currently the development of super capacitor batteries at affordable prices, is about to bring about a revolution in vehicles powered by electric motors. The world has waited a long time for this development and it comes not a moment too late. Beyond this is the vision of the 700mph Hyperloop – which I foresaw when I was a schoolboy in the 1960’s while the rest of the world was concentrating on vehicle body styles and disc brakes.

Already the Nation States which have become wealthy on the sale of their fossil fuel reserves such as Saudi Arabia – are diversifying their economies. They know what is coming.

When the world no longer needs oil as a fuel, many environmental, cost and safety problems will be solved. There will be less vehicle noise and air pollution in cities, more reliable engines needing less servicing, computer guided vehicles eliminating human error and so on.

We will then have a true understanding of what the real problems have been facing the human race since it first conceived of private transportation for the masses. That is what the elephant looks like.

In the same way, as a human race, we need to consider problems outside the fashion or Zeitgeist of the moment. Instead of specialists, we need to encourage and reward innovators and visionaries, more than anyone else. They hold the key to ending many of the problems the world still faces, in the way that science fiction writers seeded the space race. Today’s ‘race’ is giving ten billion people a fair share of the planet’s resources, it’s beauty and promise, stable governments and an eternal peace. The elephant might be big, but it’s not too big to be understood and studied. We just need to stand back, look and consider – in way few people have done before. It’s not impossible.