Since the first issue most people associate with hurting the environment is cars and transportation, I will jump on the bandwagon and go there first.
The gasoline powered automobile has changed the face of the United States, given the freedom to travel to the masses, and become an icon of Yankee Ingenuity. And while Yankee Ingenuity has recently followed Japanese Ingenuity in making smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles, the fact that oil is a finite source means that no matter how efficient our vehicles are, oil will eventually be either no longer available or prohibitively expensive for use by most people. This means that, barring introduction of new powerplants, such as an economically viable electric engine, the era of the automobile is coming to a close. While diesel may be easily produced from plants, competition with food production will keep the price of diesel high, possibly restricting it to larger transportation companies. An interesting historical point, Rudolf Diesel, the German who invented the diesel engine, originally wanted to make fuel from coal dust, then switched to vegetable oil, preferably peanut oil, as the source of fuel for his engines.
What will take its place is, obviously, a system of public transportation similar to Europe’s, trains, busses, etc. Most of these vehicles will be powered by electric engines, which returns to an earlier era in this country. When both electric and internal combustion engines were new technology, there was heavy competition in many cities about whether to power city vehicles with electric or gasoline motors. Eventually, the cheapness of oil fuel won out, but many cities, including New York and Chicago, used electric vehicles for everything from delivering milk and mail to picking up trash. The electricity for these vehicles will come from various sources, which I will discuss in a later post.
For shorter distance travel, such as commuting to work (and hoping that 50 mile commutes also die out,) methods such as bicycles will take greater prominance. Already increasing in numbers, bicycles are able to carry moderate loads, and variations, such as tricycles that can be used as taxis. Animal-based transportation may also come back into common usage, especially for larger loads.
Perhaps powerplants for car-sized vehicles will advance enough in the near future to keep such transportation viable, but the changes in infrastructure required to acommodate the new technologies will take a long time and massive amounts of capital. This, along with price, is one of the main problems facing Hydrogen vehicles. If these obstacles are overcome, perhaps a car will remain in every garage, but hopefully, the cost of ownership will be sufficient to promote other environmentally friendly forms of transportation.
