STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
By JIM HIGGS
When I visited Gary and Kathy Shaw in Tofino, British Columbia at the end of the summer vacation, we journeyed to Clayquot Island for a celebration of the largest series of arrests for civil disobedience in Canadian history. The arrests had occurred in 1993. While checking in at the entry station, I picked up a copy of The Carbohydrate Economy, a publication of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, located in Minneapolis.
I discovered that our cars, on average, consume almost their own weight in gasoline each year and many times their own weight over the lifetime of the car. We need to change to other sources of fuel, such as ethanol, which fuels hundreds of thousands of cars in Brazil and "fuels over 20,000 flexible-fueled vehicles, capable of running on more than 85 percent ethanol in the United States". ( page 4)
At the 15th Annual Dearborn, Michigan Homecoming Day celebration, Henry Ford revealed his concept for a biological car. Consisting of long and short fibers from field straw, cotton linters, hemp, flax, ramie and slash pine, the car was basically biological.
This article entitled "The New Biological Car" enlightened me. "A vegetable oil-based engine oil made from canola can entirely replace the four to five quarts of motor oil in a typical engine." (page 5)
"Many automotive companies are experimenting with natural fibers as a way to substitute for non-degradable and non-recyclable fiberglass, a material that may also cause health problems for workers. A key target is the more that one hundred pounds of fiberglass-reinforced plastics used in the interior of the car....Natural fibers like flax, hemp, jute, sisal and ramie can replace fiberglass. The new composite materials often are composed of 50 percent natural fiber and 50 percent plastic. Natural fibers are good humidity regulators, insulate well against heat and noise and reduce component weight ( thus reducing fuel consumption), all facts that Henry Ford discovered and today's auto engineers have rediscovered." ( page 6)
The article explains that the tire industry consumes 826,000 tons of natural rubber and roughly 1.3 million tones of synthetic rubber annually. :Excluding tires, the average car contains another 45 pounds of rubber in such components as door seals, engine hoses and decorative moldings. About fifteen percent of these products consist of natural rubber." ( page 6) This should be reversed. We should use natural rubber.
"Much of the push for biobased parts is a result of environmental regulations in Europe, where car producers are looking to make an entire car out of recyclable or degradable materials. Replacing the two square yards of polypropylene or nylon fibers typically woven into automotive carpeting should be relatively simple. Work is progressing nicely in this area. Chrysler's 1997 concept car, the Pronto Spyder, contained carpeting made entirely of sisal. Ray Beard, senior vice president for technology at Interface Research Corporation, tells us that hemp-based carpets perform better and could be cost-competitive with synthetic textiles if hemp were domestically produced." ( page 6)
These are exciting findings. As world population continues to increase-the major problem to be faced in the future-we need to find ways to use the products grown from the earth rather than rely on mining, ore extraction and the creation of synthetic products which may have harmful health consequences. We seem fixated on our automobiles. Why do we have to have new models every year? Why do we not rely on a rail system such as BART like Europe has for many years?
It is clear to me that our children and our grandchildren and the future progeny of people will have fewer and fewer resources such as coal, gasoline, pure water and pure air on which to depend. If we adopt the concept of the biological car and provide research money for the development of this idea, then we will have a natural source of products for farmers to grow and utilize. This will enhance our economy and provide jobs for people. The biological car is a sound, viable idea, first generated by Henry Ford and should become a priority for the automobile industry.
