4 Tons Of Plants per Mile to Ride In Your Car 995
Roland Piquepaille writes "As you might know, I enjoy big numbers. So it's just natural that I was attracted by this news release from the University of Utah, "Bad Mileage: 98 tons of plants per gallon." "A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles." For a reasonably efficient car, riding 25 miles per gallon, this translates to 4 tons of prehistoric plants per mile, or more than two tons per kilometer. The research paper also mentions that everyday, we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plants growing during a whole year just for our cars. Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are. This analysis describes the calculations and contains other details about the research paper which will be published in November by Climate Change."
Re:FIRST POST (Score:1, Insightful)
you assume (Score:2, Insightful)
Well -- yeah, Are you just figuring this out? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone for Hydrogen?
reasonably efficient? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rob.
Isn't most of the original mass water? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't quite see the point of the guy who did the calculations/report... and I did read the article. This is just throwing around big meaningless numbers. At least Ig Nobel candidate material is train-wreck-interesting.
What's the point here? (Score:5, Insightful)
John
Better than that (Score:5, Insightful)
Its even better than that! Internal combustion engines are only about 25% efficient, so for every ten gallons of gas you put into your car, only 2.5 gallons are actually used to propel you forward, the rest is just used to heat up the engine and exhaust.
What are the energy costs of bicycling? (Score:2, Insightful)
Inefficiency? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that regular gas-powered cars could be made more efficient, but don't the numbers above point more towards the "inefficiency" of the prehistoric plants --> crude oil deposits process?
Does it say (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet it's a lot.
Re:oil and petrolium (Score:1, Insightful)
This isn't just about inefficiency of cars. (Score:5, Insightful)
Key Fact.
Since only about one-10,750th of the original carbon in ancient plant material actually ends up as oil, multiply 4.14 kilograms by 10,750 to get roughly 44,500 kilograms of carbon in ancient plant matter to make a gallon of gas.
google cache of old-news biofuel breakthrough [216.239.41.104]
Note they are claiming they can eliminate dependance on oil importation with agricultural waste alone. No other cultivation necessary.
And the point is. Once we use the biofuels, we are in the carbon cycle. No more pumping carbon out of the earth.
1 day of cars = 1 year of plants (Score:3, Insightful)
[For the record, I support Hydrogen so we can tell the Arabs and Environmentists to go jump in a lake and quit bugging me.]
One word: bioethanol (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'm not talking about corn ethanol here, so please stop the silly arguments about how ethanol is inefficient - making it from corn is just silly. There are lots of cheap, far more easily harvested cellose-based plant products that can be broken down with slightly more effort into ethanol, and could provide us with a cheap, plentiful, and substantially more efficient means of storing and transporting biological energy to power our big ole' gas guzzlers.
This is a substantially more realistic and cost effective solution than hydrogen, and it doesn't require us to build massive amounts of new infrastructure (just a limited number of bioethanol plants) or a totally new kind of transportation and distribution network to handle hydrogen. Ethanol is stable, easy to transport, and holds up quite well to most abuse (well, except the drinking kind). It still takes a lot of cellosic material to make a gallon of bioethanol, but it's a lot less than went into that gallon of gas - it's just that the input of biological material happens in the here and now instead of millions of years ago - so we have to bear the cost ourselves. But it's renewable, predictable, and would remove the sick political imperatives behind the distribution and availability of fossil fuels. As an added bonus, no more terrorists.
Re:Isn't most of the original mass water? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say plants are 75% water (probably a bit high, but I'm being conservative here). That 4 tons of wet-weight per mile becomes 1 ton of wet-weight per mile. It's all in the same order of magnitude. 2000 pounds of dried spinach to push my car 1 mile is still a lot of plant matter.
Anyway, I think the point of this calculation is similar to the point being made by those illustrative lessons (say, in Time Magazine) about how many miles high a trillion dollars in debt would be if we stacked 1 dollar bills, or how many miles of muscle we have in our body, or the number of land mines per person have been buried in Korea. It just offers a different perspective.
Re:say no to cars? (Score:0, Insightful)
The wonderful thing about cliche arguments is that they are always so easily turned upside down. You see what you need is a real solution. Stop making people, institute widespread culling of humantiy, reduce headcount with vigor and we won't have the need for things like highways anymore. Heck if you go far enough we'll be back in the day of the horse and buggy.
Forgot the entropy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I agree that today's internal combustion engines are ineffienct. However, this is a classic apples-to-oranges comparision gone bad. The prehistoric plant matter in question went through a whole heck of a lot in its journey to becoming crude oil. As another poster already pointed out, a non-trivial part of that transformation was loss of most of the water in the plants, and hence much of their volume. That means his figures for the weight are already suspect.
It would be much more proper to first examine the plants-to-petrol transformation process, and comment on how efficient that process is first, then the petrol-to-MPG process.
This is simply more cargo cult science [brocku.ca], and we can and should do better, IMO.
Are cars inefficient, or... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not saying that cars are the most efficient things on the face of the earth, but these numbers don't necessarily imply that cars are uniquely inefficent among all our technology. It just implies that most of our technology relies on an inefficient process (the conversion of normal organic matter to fossil fuels) to power it.
I'd like to see how much prehistoric plant matter it would take to cook my Thanksgiving dinner on my stove, or heat up the water for my 10-15 minute shower in the morning.
Re:reasonably efficient? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:reasonably efficient? (Score:2, Insightful)
Good News! (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's pretend that we've got just 5 million years' worth of plants as the source for all the oil. That gives us 13,000+ years of oil for our cars. Even if we assume that all other uses of fossil fuels amount to 10 times as much use per year, that still gives us well over 1200 years worth of energy.
Maybe by then the eco-whacko Left will allow us to build nuclear power plants again. I know, I know. Call me a dreamer...
It's not about the dead plants, it's about us (Score:5, Insightful)
Environmentalist: We're running out, and our current wasteful practices mean we're running out fast!
Apathetic response: Who cares about a bunch of dead plants anyway?
The answer being, as we (literally) burn through these resources, they not only produce waste that endangers the place we live, they also become more scarce -- leading to the places that have the dead plants, in the form of oil, receiving quite a lot of value for what's left. Scarcity and value, see? Take a look at the extreme wealth of Saudi Arabia's ruling family, examine the Wahaabist faith they've backed using that wealth, all the result of a scarcity of these old dead plants in the world, and then tell me -- is it a potential problem for oil to be the scarce resource we're relying on? Do we want to continue to use inefficient methods of blowing through the oil we've got left, making it more scarce, increasing the upheaval caused by things like Opec's production targets? Or not?
So, see, when environmentalists are worried about this, it's not some tree-hugging lovey-eyed thing on their part, it's self-interest. Similarly, when scientists fret over an oncoming mass extinction, they're worried because no previous mass extinction has allowed the currently dominant group of species to continue in that role. It's not that they're only worried about black-footed ferrets or whatever; they also see that human survival is at stake.
That being the point. Not that "really big numbers" is necessarily the best argument, but human survival is the point.
Re:say no to cars? (Score:2, Insightful)
More buses, bike lanes, walk-ways, Human-Scale Urban Planning, streetcars, subways etc all have a positive effect of reducing energy used.
Further, Im a litter perturbed with your ignorant, tired argument. The "Environmentalists are luddites" argument is stupidity. Environmentalists want balance. Technology can help achieve that balance. But too often than not, more better bigger stuff is just made for the sake of it... for the sake of consumption. This wasted energy (for instance, the personal 4tonne SUV) is what is The Problem. As this article articulates, the trouble is that we are consuming stored energy at such a rate it is amazing. Humanity needs to understand give and take w/ the Natural World. As it stands, we are destroying this vibrant natural world -- all the life on this planet that we managed to live with for millions of years is jeapordized by the the explosion of consumption over the last 3-400 years (for instance). You may think that Some New Technology will arise to solve our problems -- I dont -- and I have no interest in taking that very risky bet. New technology is welcome and necessary -- but ALL the impact of modern life needs to be assessed. When you expell crap into the air from your SUV, you are soiling the Commons. When you pump up oil, refine it and burn it in your SUV you are *NOT* paying the full cost.
Capitalists have managed to convince you that they are Creating Profit when they pump oil (cut rainforests, build suburbs, etc) and sell it -- in fact, they are not. They are ROBBING the planet (which we must all share wisely) and telling you its "ok". Its not, and if there is any sense in Humanity, we had better realize it quick - and not just about Oil. Look around you -- the glue in your chipped-wood desk, the metal PC case, your telephone, the lights, the carpet, drywall, everything around you was made in a giant pollution belching factory somewhere. We *cannot* continue to create all that pollution. The natural resources required to create that stuff (outside of the toxic waste byproducts), *is* ALSO not infinite.
Oil/Cars are one big problem, but not the only one. We are polluting ourselves off the planet, destroying our natural heritage, living in 'the red' wrt Energy use, and telling ourselves how Fucking Smart we are. Get real buddy and wake the hell up.
What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Building more buses to combat traffic congestion is like buying a bigger belt to combat obesity
The wonderful thing about cliche arguments is that they are always so easily turned upside down.
Yeah, except that the original quip actually made sense. Increasing the availability and utilization of mass transit actually *does* combat traffic congestion.
Ass.
This says nothing of car efficiency (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:burgers (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover however much the cow ate, its food came from recently grown, mostly sustainable sources (eg hay). It's carbon neutral over a matter of years. Burning up fossil fuels at this rate would be carbon neutral only over thousands if not millions of years, i.e. it would take that may years of plant growth to put that carbon back in the soil.
Re:Isn't most of the original mass water? (Score:4, Insightful)
Could you maybe tell us WHY it's "fraudulent" to include all the parts of the prehistoric plants that don't get turned into gasoline?
Take that away, and you've taken away the part of the figure that people can relate to. We all know what living plants look like, what with their water mass and their insoluble fiber. If you take only the stuff that becomes gasoline, what does that look like? Is that crude oil? I don't even know. Now THAT would be a meaningless statistic.
it doesn't matter how many dead, prehistoric plants were required to make the oil we use.
I disagree. No one would argue that oil is a renewable resource, but studies like these demonstrate just how much of a resource drain it is.
So what? We will never run out of oil (Score:4, Insightful)
As prices rise, alternatives to oil become financially viable. Suddenly fuel cells or wind power or any other technology currently more expensive than oil looks attractive to investors. Those who can afford oil buy it, while others turn to the alternatives. Assuming no new oil is discovered (to address the supply issue), eventually no one cares about oil as everyone has transitioned to other forms of energy. The remaining oil sits in the ground unused.
Of course this adjustment must take place over the mid- to long-run. Short-term adjustments are called "oil shocks," such as we had in the 1970s or during the early days of most recent wars.
Helevius
It's interesting...but... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Staggering"? Not really. Most of what used to be a plant was water. And if, as the article says, only 1/10750th of the carbon from the plan makes it to become oil, the rest served as fertilizer (to help other plants grow and become oil (and more fertilizer)).
If the idea is to point out that gasoline engines are inefficient, well, duh! If the idea is to point out that oil is an unsustainable energy source, well, duh! If the idea is to point out that we need to develop new energy technologies, well, duh! But "98 tons of plants per gallon" is kind of a red herring. Plants die, the water evaporates, the plant mass decomposes and serves as fertilizer and a little bit, over a long period of time, ends up as oil. As a system, it's somewhat inappropriate to pick out a single element the way that the author of this paper did. Yes, it did take quite a large amount of plant material to make a gallon of gas, but if more of the plant material turned into oil, then less would have been available to enrich the soil and provide for the growth of new plants. The numbers are interesting, but they only tell part of the story.
Oh, and to add to the conclusion of the article, the author left out nuclear power from "other technologies".
-h-
Cars inefficient? (Score:3, Insightful)
-matthew
Re:burgers (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but a Hummer is not the best ways to use that energy, which is the real point of the article.
Try oatmeal and bicycles for an example (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think that the words "car" and "efficiency" belong in the same sentence.
Driving = squandering resources. Once squandered, you get this [oilcrisis.org].
Re:Well -- yeah, Are you just figuring this out? (Score:3, Insightful)
The message of those eco-whacko Leftists is: Minimize your footprint. Reduce your energy consumption. Reduce your soil consumption. Reduce your area consumption. Be more efficient. Be more productive with your resources. Turn out more bang for the bucks. Oh wait. That's not eco-whacko. That's purely capitalistic: Get more out of your investment. Produce more with less.
Re:say no to cars? (Score:3, Insightful)
I got another good one for: Be more local.
The other day in the supermarket I saw some cookies, they sold for 87 cents (plus tax).
Problem is: They were made in Jamaica, sold to Singapore and then finally sold in Canada.
I just guess here, but I would say those cookies travelled more than I did in the past 2 years and most definetly used more than 87 cents worth of energy.
Oh, and as for the caloric value, according to the nutrional information on the back, the pack contains 600 kCal.
M.
Re:burgers (Score:3, Insightful)
WWGD? (Score:3, Insightful)
People want to drive SUVs. But SUVs use too much gas and pollute too much. What is the proper geek response to this dilemma?
A. Make everyone walk, take the bus, and drive smaller cars.
B. Invent an SUV that gets 100 miles to the gallon (preferably a gallon of H20).
It amazes me how many geeks reach for the social engineering solution instead of the ingenious, creative technical response that is the hallmark of geekdom.
Re:say no to cars? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, oil is an energy source. When it is no longer practical and/or desirable, you do understand that the Sun is always a very good Plan B?
There is no shortage of energy. There will never by a shortage of energy until the Sun goes nova and evaporates the earth. Using oil is robbing the earth of nothing, and it is our inefficient and irresponsible use of that oil that is the biggest problem. Low emissions is simply an engineering problem (and one that doesn't need to be driven by legislation, either, as markets for energy-efficient engines become more common).
The best thing you can do is spread awareness of alternative types of engines/power sources/etc. and help create the demand for them and the resulting markets that drive the corporations. Consumer demand does wonders and is more efficient than the government even dreams about.
Re:How much gas does that give us? (Score:2, Insightful)
1) The Oil/coal was mainly created during the Carbon Age, so it's only about 80 million years.
2) Only Peat bogs turned into oil/coal, not all plant live, maybe 1% ?
3) The article states that currenlty about 22% of plant life is harvested and replaced each year, and we would need about 33% to have the equivalent carbon energy for a day's worth of consumption.
Now ask yourself the question: How big would this number be without agriculture, say 10%.
=> 80,000,000/365/100/10 = 218 years, which is about the current estimate for coal+oil reserves, of which oil is only about 10%
Oh, and when we're talking big numbers,
Global consuption: 27,481,215,000 barrels per year
= 1,154,211,030,000 gallons/Year
=>100,000,000,000,000 Tons of original plan life.
Adriaan.
Re:burgers (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you need to get to that destination? Could you get there by walking, or taking a mountain bike? Sure, someone who buys a hummer but never leaves the pavement is an ass. But that doesn't automatically mean that someone who does leave the pavement needs a Hummer... or that they even need to leave the pavement at all.
Re:Try oatmeal and bicycles for an example (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:say no to cars? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is something horrificly wrong in the way the market works I'd say.
Just like the AC said, read up on comparative advantage. It's called free trade. I live in a temperate area. I can't get pineapples from my region because you can't grow pineapples in temperate zones. Thus the Thai produce it for me. My regional economy is better suited to producing apples and grapes, so these products are produced in leiu of other products.
It's not horrifically wrong at all. It makes perfect sense and it is the way the world economy should work. That is, unless you'd like to go back to preindustrial conditions and live by the mercy of the harvest.
... and their math is wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If it *is* plants (Score:4, Insightful)
There is really no evidence supporting an organic origin of petroleum. At one time, it was the best explanaition we had; now, with oil drilled from beneath basement rock, and from 3B-year-old sandstone, there is no longer any reason to just assume organic origin. Too much evidence points to non-organic origins.
Re:say no to cars? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is wrong is simply the cost, I am sure there is more spent on fuel to truck the apples to the store than I pay for it.
Someone has to subsidize it, I wonder who.
Remember, there is no free lunch (or apple).
Besides, Ontario grows quite a lot of their own apples.
Meaningless Statistics (Score:2, Insightful)
Please invent a car that goes fast(100+ mph), is fun to drive, cheap to operate, relatively save, can haul my entire family around even in the snow and sand, and is affordable enough that I can own two. While doing everything that my SUV does, this future vehicle must not pollute. Please do this so I can buy one. Oh wait, I already own two SUVs that can do all of these things, and I don't really care that they pollute (I live in an uncongested area) so why should I buy a new car?
Anyway you need to make this new vehicle better than mine so I have a reason to buy it. Or maybe you should just get a law passed forcing me to spend the money now so that I have a reason to buy the new car and line the pockets of the lobbyists, politicians, and auto manufacturers for doing nothing of value. Let's further fuck up the economy by placing additional artificial restraints on the markets. Then we can all sit around and complain about how we can't afford anything because we all just bought new cars and couldn't get any value on the trade-in because it's worthless. And now that they are forcing auto dealers to pay you for your old car, the prices are outrageous. Oh, and since they gave the auto manufacturers incentives and tax breaks to lesson the burden on them and insure that they wouldn't simply quit the business, my already burdensome taxes have gone up. I sure hope those people who live on the other side of the country are enjoying the clean air I'm paying for. It's too bad they couldn't solve the problem on their own and had to make my family pay for it.
But please invent that car, I WILL buy one if it's better than mine. I don't want to pollute. I just don't really care that I do because there's no compelling reason not to.
One last observation: this is supposed to be news for nerds. Why do so many nerds want to solve problems by compelling the behavior of others rather than compelling the forces of nature?
News at 11 incredible Solar Energy inefficiency (Score:3, Insightful)
Just being contrarian :) (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to think the environmentalists would be opposed to this idea. The idea that we really have a potentially *unlimited* supply of oil could keep them up at night with visions of the 28-wheel Hummer H5. :-o
Re:Well -- yeah, Are you just figuring this out? (Score:2, Insightful)
Suddenly you have a few millenia to figure out how to make electricity to produce hydrogen without gasoline. Think we can do it?
Economic Nonsense! (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's look at your argument: Since your (inexpensive) produce is grown in far-away places and brought to you, something must be wrong with the "market."
First, have you considered that it might not be feasible to grow the things you want locally? Ever grown citrus in a non-tropical climate like you've got there in Toronto? They don't do well in the cold and it often gets too cold even here in Florida: freezing weather harms the trees and can destroy the fruit. Now I imagine that huge greenhouses could be built to grow citrus and other tropical-climate crops in, but you'd find the cost of those greenhouses would have to be ammortized into the selling price of the fruit, and that fruit would be much more expensive as a result.
Manufacturers want to maximize their profits, that is true (think: maximizing return on investment, ROI). One method of controlling profits involves unit (car, banana, whatever) pricing. Most people versed in economic principles know that the price-profit curve is an upside-down saddle shape, sort of like a upside-down parabola. Extremely low prices mean no or even negative profits, no matter how many units they sell. Extremely high prices mean that nobody buys their products, and no profits are realized. By pricing their products optimally, or at the top of the "hill," their profits are maximized.
Another method of controlling profits is to control manufacturing and delivery costs. You seem to be proposing that manufacturing costs be traded for delivery costs: make things locally (lower delivery cost), no matter what infrastructure may be required (manufacturing cost).Here in the United States, many people bemoan the fact that many manufacturing operations have moved overseas, but we'll stick with agriculture products. By concentrating production of climate-specific crops in their natural climates, higher yields are grown for less money.
Sure: I could grow peaches here in Florida, but I'd have to do it indoors with a greenhouse I can cool to freezing weather for about a month (peaches need the cold weather to set fruit). You can grow oranges in Toronto in a greenhouse if you want. It's just not economically feasible to do so. Coffee and cacao only grows in areas like the mountains of Central America and West Africa, unless somebody pays to build a greenhouse that can simulate the high-altitude conditions those crops grow in. When's the last time you saw a Canadian-grown Macadamia tree or date palm?
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a word, NO. Welcome to the world of economies of scale [bized.ac.uk]. Cans of tuna are not delivered from the packing plant to your grocer's shelf individually in personal automobiles. They're packed into flats that are loaded onto pallets that are then carried by ship and/or truck to the final destination. Although road tractors don't get stellar fuel economy [refrigeratedtrans.com], they carry a massive amount of cargo and the transportation costs are divided among the entire payload.
For that matter, here in the US, a first-class postal letter costs $0.37 [usps.com]. According to your logic, a postal carrier picks my single letter out of my mail box, drives it all the way to California, or where ever, and delivers it to the destination mail box, all for $0.39.
You are! All costs associated with bringing the product to the shelf, plus the fraction of the operating expenses for the store (personnel, electricity, insurance, etc) for you to buy are wrapped up in the purchase price!
What's inefficient, cars or nature? (Score:2, Insightful)
Umm, just pointing out how many tons of plant matter went into making a gallon gas is irrelevant to how efficient cars are- unless someone can engineer a car that will start manufacturing gasoline more efficiently from plant matter.
The efficiency of cars is only determined by how much of the available energy in the gasoline is put into useful work in the car. Figuring out how much plant matter went into producing the gasoline is a measure of the energy efficieny of the natural process that made the gas, not of the vehicle.
-Phat Tony.
Re:say no to cars? (Score:2, Insightful)
Despite what you may have learned, "It's free trade" isn't the answer to end all answers. Free trade is notoriously poor at valuing externalities. Transporting goods over long distances, for example, may be profitable, but would be less so if the transporter had to pay the actual cost of the pollution he's creating.
Re:WWGD? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, Geeks pick 'A' because it's a _better_ solution, not because either 'A' or 'B' are achievable.
Re:burgers (Score:2, Insightful)
Overnight you have eliminated an enormous number of SUV's, 4x4's, etc. All of this without really penalising the people that actually _need_ to use them at all. It is also a good idea purely from a safety point of view, because these larger vehicles are inherently more dangerous for pedestrians and other road users due to their greater momentum, poorer handling and reduced maneovreability
Re:How much gas does that give us? (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the untold megatons of krill and protozoa and mongooses that have been decaying over the megayears?
I never said my figure was the end all be all figure.
It was a wild out my ass number, kind of like the wild out thier ass number the people doing the "report" or "study" used.
Mother nature recycles (Score:3, Insightful)
Several posters have countered with the suggestion that mother nature is inefficient, using so much plant material to make so little fuel.
But, both the "cars are inefficeint" and "nature is inefficient" arguements miss one important point: That the huge amount of biomass was spread out over millions of years of growth, with the vast majority of the material being recycled from one growth generation to the next. Obviously, just by virtue of the fact that a gallon of petrol weighs a lot less than a small forrest, we must conclude that most of the material didn't become fuel. Most of it became fertilizer/compost, and fueled the next generation of growth.
Adding up the mass of all these generations of plant growth is really just repeatedly counting the same material over and over.
Cows are not "natural" (was Re:burgers) (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, it constantly amazes me just how little people know about agricultural history.
Cows do not, and never have, existed "in harmony with their natural environment". Animals which people today would recognize as "cows" did not exist prior to about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. We (humans) made them. We bred them from, now extinct, animals called aurochs.
Same with grain crops like wheat. What we today call "wheat" is a plant that simply would not be able to survive without humans. They are a mutant strain that does not shed its seed kernals when they are fertile. This is good for us (we can harvest the grain and eat it), but bad for the plant (no seeds on the ground to reproduce).
Almost nothing we eat today existed prior to about 10,000 years ago. We humans bioengineered it all: wheat, rice, apples, corn, cows, etc, etc, etc. Yes, I'm sure you can find a few food staples that exist in the wild, but they are few and far between.
Re:say no to cars? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:say no to cars? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is wrong is that we allow the producers and/or traders to externalize much of the price of actually making and shipping things around, i.e. we all pay for the infrastructure and subsidize energy costs (either directly, e.g. by invading unfriendly but petroleum-rich countries) or indirectly, by not charging for enviromental degradation.
As a result I can often buy a pineapple at about the same price per gramm as apples grown next door. I don't want to pay more for pineapples (I react slighly allergic to plain raw plain apples, and I like pineapples better anyways), but I definitly agree that a more rational system would make them quite a lot more expensive.
Capitalism is very good at optimizing resource usage within a given set of constrainst. It's the job of politics to provide the constraints that lead to a reasonable outcome. And it's our job to elect politicians that actually do something about it, instead of those that just promise lower taxes, higher profits, and cheaper pineapples.
Re:say no to cars? (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish that people would get off the "SUV's are evil" kick.
Let me preface this with: I don't own an SUV.