Why Americans should embrace Alternative fuel vehicles Term Paper - 1

Why Americans should embrace Alternative fuel vehicles - Term Paper Example If current energy usage patterns continue for a few more decades then the ecosystems and environments across the world would be damaged beyond repair, putting at risk the long-term survival of our species. (Borowitz, 1999, p.255) The rest of this essay will elaborate on these points and present the reasons why Americans should embrace alternative fuel vehicles. Beyond concerns about peak-oil and issues of sustaining conventional oil supplies, there is the danger posed by environmental pollution. While manufacturing industries play their part in polluting air, water and soil, the chief contributors are motor vehicles. For example, 90% of the carbon monoxide, 50% of the volatile organic compounds, and 40% of the ozone in metropolitan areas come from motor vehicles. (Meotti, 1995, p.27) With car ownership per-capita in America being one of the highest among advanced economies, there is a urgent need for alternative fuels. There is also the option of attempting to reduce car sales and car usage. But since this outcome is highly unlikely, finding substitute fuels for petroleum-based ones is the more plausible option going forward. Soybean oil is another alternative fuel that holds a lot of promise. When oil prices spiked during the first Gulf War in 1991, American farmers put to use the huge surplus of soybean oil stored in tanks across the country. They said that Soybean oil can be refined into bio-diesel, which can be used by vehicles. Already, by this time, bio-diesel was being manufactured in Europe using rapeseed oil. And by following the same procedure, Soybean oil could also be converted into bio-diesel, which would prove to be a cleaner and eco-friendly energy alternative. (Schmidt, 2007, p.87) Experts and business people have now identified bio-diesel as a key player in the alternative fuels market. It also has the advantage of being produced by both small-scale manufacturers as well as large industries. While

Revise essay draft__compare and contrast Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Revise draft__compare and contrast - Essay Example Claudia Wallis in her article, â€Å"The Multitasking Generation,†(2006) and Nicholas Carr’s â€Å"Is Google Making Us Stupid?†(2008) argue against the way people interact and rely upon the technology physically, emotionally, mentally, and socially in certain unpleasant ways. In his personal life Carr describes a lesser ability to concentrate. He focuses upon the intellectual laziness that access to fast internet answers, the mobile phone and other technology can breed mental laziness. He goes back into history to show how the coming of technology can have negative effects upon the human mind, from the 14th century onwards, though the industrial revolution and on into the modern age, with an ever growing negative impact. Wallis focuses instead more on the social and interpersonal communicational perspective when people are persistently interacting and multitasking with technology, and how that these can have a negative effects; both of these authors are absolutely right. She discusses how children are perpetually interacting with technology and that parents think that this multitasking is a product and a credit to the presence of that technology and their minds. Unfortunately, that is little better than an â€Å"old wives tale† that people may tell themselves to justify their children’s excessive technological interactions:- Human beings have always had a capacity to attend to several things at once. Mothers have done it since the hunter-gatherer era--picking berries while suckling an infant, stirring the pot with one eye on the toddler† (Wallis 2006). Many biologists and anthropologists would easily agree that the things that defines humans is their curiosity, the ability to learn and adapt, and the ability to multitask and to process multiple information at once. This did not evolve as a side effect of technological advancement. It is rather the reverse which is true: the technology emerged as a result of