Interesting car rental (electric or dino juice?) experience

[Marcel Birgelen]

Like you say, we need to rethink our communities so that we don't have to drive everywhere we go, for every little thing. I like solar, wind and other alternative power sources but they are only adjuncts. There just isn't enough surface area on the planet to put up wind and solar energy farms to produce enough energy to power the world. I like nuclear power but we're going to have to double down on research to work out the kinks. I think it can be done if we put our minds to it. Like you, I think we do have enough energy to go around if we do it right. The problem is getting people to do it right...or, at least half-way right.

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I really think that if humanity would go out on a GLOBAL mission to fix their energy problems once and for all, we could create the infrastructure to run almost everything on solar and nuclear, combined with water and wind where feasible. There would be no need for any fossil fuel used for stationary electricity production anymore.

It helps to visualize stuff. Below is the surface area we would need to cover with solar panels to power the ENTIRE WORLD with solar alone. Obviously, you would need more than that, since you cannot store those large amounts of energy. That's why a worldwide, coordinated effort would be required to pull something like this off. You would require a high-power world-wide, interconnected power-grid. While that may sound futuristic, it really isn't, on a technical level.

solar-panels-over-new-mexico-2048x1118.png

Maybe governments should mandate that below a certain latitude, where solar starts to become sufficiently effective, that all built-up surfaces need to be covered by solar by default.
Maybe we should tell governments they should put their money into bolstering the electric grids and make sure the stuff is future-proof..
Maybe those countries that have an abundance of sun, but a major lack of population should start to attract big-time investors to build the kind of solar farms that power the world if it's dark on the other side of the planet.

As for nuclear: France has shown us that it's clearly possible to run your entire country on nuclear power. They'll be the first that will actually conform to the Paris climate accords. The Russians have shown us that breeder reactors can be simple and reliable With breeder reactors into the mix, we could run the world for a 1000 years or so with the CURRENT supply of uranium...

As for more livable communities. This channel may be a bit of "self promotion", but I think some of the communities here could be a template for many urban communities around the world that were designed for cars rather than people and even around here, stuff could be done FAR FAR better in many aspects.

[Randy Stankey]

In your video:

"[Cars] burden everyone with thousands of dollars per year for the costs of an automobile, just so they can work and feed themselves."
"Nobody should have to own a car just to participate in society."

I couldn't agree more! The speaker also says that designing cities to require a car is criminal. I've been saying stuff like this for years!

It really galls me when people say things like, "We need more electric cars." Well, we already have too many cars on the roads but you can't solve the problem by building more cars.

It wouldn't matter if they ran on unicorn farts!

A car is a car.