hydrogen induced sleeplessness

The other night I found myself awake most of the night, upset over Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles. I think it is great that they don't produce any pollution - fantastic point in their favor actually. But I was thinking of the hundreds of millions of dollars the US government has spent on developing hydrogen fuel cells . My simple point I want to make is that if our government had spent as much money developing Solar Electric Vehicles, which are also non-pollutive, I am convinced we would be much closer to a viable form of transportation. We might even have had the cars available for purchase - since they actually are already available. President George W. Bush, in the State of the Union address on January 28, 2003 said "Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

It is true that hydrogen powered cars is an answer, but it isn't the anwer that has made any difference in our environment or in our goal of being less dependent on foreign energy since then .

If you are like me, pro-solar, you might question his motives on moving towards such a difficult to procure source of energy. The answer is painfully obvious - $$$. Sure he has our economy in mind - we can't just get energy for free, how would all the fuel companies get paid? What would happen to all the gas station owners, builders, fixers, cleaner-upper-afters? What would people spend their money on that they would otherwise be spending on fuel?

Now I say that sarcastically, but it is also true - what would happen to our economy if we weren't dependent on foreign oil?

That is the subject for a future discussion!

I just want to point out something interesting. Look at the picture above very carefully. Do you see the Shell label and symbols? I don't know much about Shell. But I do know that buying hydrogen fuel from Shell seems a little removed from the effort to distance ourselves from foreign energy, not just oil.

But to get back to my sleepless night, I want to relate something funny. I was all unhinged about hydrogen, but when I traced back what had caused me to get upset, it was a notice from my dairy telling me that, "due to the rising cost of corn and feed," they were raising the cost of my milk. I had confused ethanol and hydrogen in my sleepy mind. I could go off on government subsidies and ethanol too. But that will have to wait.

Enjoy!