Tuesday, April 28, 2009

No, Massa.

I remember an old Soviet-era anecdote from the satellite countries.

It seems their farming equipment, especially tractors, would often break down. Or they'd run out of gas and the farmers would have no money to buy more.

Their solution? Hitch a couple of cows to the front of the tractor and keep on plowing.

This struck me as remarkably inefficient. Surely, someone could come up with an adaptor of some sort that would allow the cows to pull the plow directly, without the extra weight of the tractor.

I underestimated the ability of socialism to crush innovation, I guess.

Now, fast-forward a quarter century or so, and we here in the United States have situations such as this, in which a heroic public official will not be thwarted by the range limitations of fuel-cell technology:

[Congressman] Massa [D-N.Y.] drove one fuel cell car while a hybrid SUV
towing an additional SUV followed along. Once he got half way, he switched to
new fuel cell car. The empty fuel cell was then towed back by the first SUV. As
he continued on his journey, the second SUV followed. Once Massa arrived in DC,
the second SUV then towed the second fuel cell car back to NY.



If we HAVE to have caps on greenhouse-gas emissions, I say we start with putting them on dumbass publicity stunts.

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