Blog #10 Federal government to use low emission cars

President Obama will be making a speech tonight, discussing his plan to have one million electric cars on America's roads by 2015. The article also stated the plans of five companies to use alternative energy namely, electric cars to power much of their fleet of vehicles. At&t, Verizon, Fed-Ex, UPS, and Pepsico have all pledged to use twenty thousand vehicles that will displace 7 million gal/yr of gas. This is great news and the push from the White House to change most if not all of their vehicles to electric and alternative energy appears to be having an affect on companies that use a large fleet of vehicles. This initial push may be the catalyst we need to start offering stations in major cities across the U.S. that provide fuel other than gas. We're looking at a difficult and potentially costly change in the way that we fuel our daily transportation in the next few years and it is going to change a lot of things the people of this nation. The short term changes will certainly cost a good amount, but in the long term it is going to save people a lot of money, particularly to those who are able to convert to some sort of alternative energy transportation early. The benefits, to me, far out-weight the initial cost in converting to alternative energy cars. Reduced emissions in major cities will improve health with a decrease in respiratory issues for young and old. Hydrogen and natural gas cars would be able to access the abundant American supply which would keep more money circulating within our own economy and take away some of the threat that turbulent oil producing countries have over us right now, which is very evident with the recent spike in gas.
I speculate that there will be some currently unforeseen backlash with some of these alternative energy vehicles, particularly within electric cars that rely on batteries that pose a potential hazard regarding their disposal when that time comes, but that is certainly something that can be dealt with, and in the mean time, it gives me hope to see a real effort being made by the nations capitol to get rid of foreign dependency and start using the technology already available to us to make a difference in the environment, economy and the health of it's people.

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