smart cars

during the industrial revolution everyone was excited about the new efficiency with which we could now manfacture, produce, and ship products.it was fantastic, people were coming up with new ideas creating new versions of old ideas and thus bcreating the world we know today.it was without a doubt the fastest growing and innovating age man has ever known. fantastic right? well yeah but with all the new "stuff" http://encarta.msn.com/ came some unforseen problems. people of the day could not have had any idea that what they were doing would create issues for generations to come. granted they did revolution ize the world and that type of leap cant come without some gliches.it was only about a hundred years later that we began to realize the magnitude of what had happened. the main fuel source for all of our new "stuff" is oil. a dirty fuel that can be found deep in the crust of the earth. it creates smog and pollutes our atmosphere. in one hundred years we have done more damage to the earth with oil than all of mankind in the previous thousands of years. oh yeah, we cant live without it. kind of creates a problem doesnt it? well now in the midst of another great revolution, the technological revolution, we are attempting to find ways to deal with the problem we have created. because oil is our number one fuel source and it is so incredibly destructive to the planet that supports our lives we have decided it is time to try and fix this. the first and most common everyday usage of oil is byy every person over the age of 16. the car is a staple of everyday life for americans and is constantly emitting nasty oil waste products. scientists have begun trying to find an alternative source of fuel http://eere.gov/ to power our transportation. other source sof fuel are available but i believe the biggest challenge is going to be incorporating them into everyday life for the average citizen. giant leaps have been made with the introduction of new smart cars http://smart.com/ that offer more fuel efficient alternatives to the V8's we know so well. while we have come a long way from the gas guzzling muscle cars of the 60's and 70's we are still a long way from fully integrating an enviornmentally friendly fuel source into everyday life in america. when opec created a suplly shortage in the 70's america's answer was to create more fuel efficient cars. kind of fixing the symptom and not the illness. while other countries like brazil decided to take themselves out of the oil dependency that we currently enjoy. their answer was to find a new fuel source and start integrating it immediately. crazy idea right? well it took three decades but they are currently http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062101769.html using a little more than half the oil they were when that crisis hit. they utilize an indigenous sugar cane and convert it into fuel. talk of utilizing our own corn stalk http://http://www.abc.net.au/tropic/stories/s1905459.htm as the new fuel source. wouldnt you love to tell opec to take a hike...