Need help from my fellow Jeepers.

Nothing like leaving it to the last minute, eh?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but emissions are a sucky topic, and I can't personally think of a way that we can slam them to the ground and turn them into mud-pies

To tell the truth, I would start out by turning the tables on them. Ask them how they got to class that day, bike ride, walking, horse back riding? Hmmm.. I think I have a winner here. The reason that vehicles were originally built was to replace the horse. Now there is nothing wrong with horses, other than the mess they leave behind all the time. For each person there was 2 or 3 horses to help them do their jobs, travel and such. There was very little exploration! Would we be in space now if it wasn't for the internal combustion engine?

Lets move on to the topic of paper usage. We are aiming to be a paperless society right? Ok, now ask them if they would wipe their arses with their bare hands after dumping a particularly large load. Their answer would be NO! Ask them how the paper got to be in their washrooms. Well, it all started with a truck driving loggers to the bush, a truck pulling the logs out of the bush, a truck hauling pulp to a paper plant and the plant producing rolls of paper for them to wipe their arses.

With out the internal combustion engine, would they be able to wipe their butts? In today's society, NO! Once they decide not to use paper to write their articles on, paper to wipe their butts, gas to get from parents home in the EastCoast to school on the WestCoast, then they would have something to complain about. Its the enviro's "holier than thows" that complain, but lets see how well they do with out trucks and cars and trains and planes and ....

I would say that there are more environmentally conscience products out there, and in fact I am looking into a converstion to hydro power. But for now, there isn't anything that will do better than diesel or petro. Lets allow them to win the fact that there are other options out there, but until lifestyles and cashbooks change, we will stay at status quo.

BTW: electric 18 wheeler rigs are not even on the drawing boards yet!

Laters!

Vance - Calgary, Alberta, Canada
1985 4x4 S-10 and 1988 Jeep YJ

Sorry I'm a little late, wish you hadn't waited until the last minute.

1) There is no current power source for replacing the internal combusion motor, not yet. Research and development is on the way, but it's years out, IMHO.

2) H8Monday is right, automobiles are not the largest cause of pollution, just the easiest to regulate. Attacking the small consumer is a lot easier than the large corporation. Since public perception is 90% of everything, the people feel complacent that the government is doing their job to reduce the pollution "problem".

3) Mention MTBE, how it was supposed to assist in the reduction of automobile emissions. So far all it's done is increase the cost of the gasoline to the consumer and create jobs cleaning it up when it hits the local water supply. Working in the environmental field, and at several groundwater hazardous waste cleanup sites, I can tell you this stuff will screw you up bad, 100 times worse than the tailpipes of automobiles ever thought of, and 1,000 times quicker.

4) Mention the all battery cars, and how an accident in one will result in the occupant being covered with acid or acid gel, and how the impact of so many batteries in an accident will be catastrophic. Also mention how they propose getting rid of such batteries when the time comes. Also mention the limited range of the vehicles and extra expense incurred by the owner at recharging them.

5) Now mention the ability of the ecosystem to take care of it's own and how hybrid poplar trees and phragmite reeds are being used as phyto-remediation (using plants to cleanup hazardous substances rather than mechanical or chemical treatment). It saves a ton of money, it's just as effective, and reduces the risk of personnel exposure to hazardous substances.

6) Also mention the ever-tightening restrictions on automobile emissions, and how the tailpipe emissions, due to catalytic converters, put out little more than carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and water vapor, which are all utilized by trees and plantlife (remember photosynthesis?, the uptake of CO2 and expulsion of oxygen).

7) Now for the whammy. Ask them what they would use for an alternate means of transportation and who would pay fo rit. Put them on the defensive instead of you. Make them answer questions and think about it. If the solution were so easy, why aren't we changing the way the world moves about? Why have the government work on a solution to wean itself from petroleum based energy, why not private industry? As to depleting our sources, in the 70's we thought there were only 10 years of petroleum left in the world, hence the energy crunch. Today it's over 20 years later and gas prices now are about the same price. Why haven't we run out? More efficient vehicles and the inability of certain individuals to accurately measure the world's reserves.

Let's look into the evolution of the automobile. It went from a gas guzzling, emissions spewing personal conveyance to a miserly, eco-friendly work of art. It's still evolving. Evolution takes time. The newest automobiles are internal combustion-electric hybrids, which I think is a step in the right direction.

I hope you did well in your debate, next time try to give us a little notification and maybe we can help more.

JEEPN
'81 CJ-8 Scrambled!
GM151/SM465/NP205 twinstick/7"Lift/33"TSL's/IHC D44's 4.10's Lock'd