Well it seems that I have once again taken a blogging hiatus. My apologies. Nursing school sometimes gets the better of me. But I have one full month of freedom! So before I head off to a wonderful, relaxing vacation in Mexico, I thought I'd leave you with something to read. After my parents returned from a rather ill-fated trip to Colorado (an elk ran into my dad's truck, no joke), my dad dropped an interesting piece of information in my lap. I was on some environmental tirade when my father grinned and said, "oh yeah? did you know that hybrids are worse for the environment then hummers?" I immediately balked at this statement, shook my head, and denied it all. But I agreed to look it up, and so now you get to hear about the results.
As usual, the details are sketchy. The issue comes in in how hybrid cars are made. One article summed it up something like this. The batteries that power the cars are made from nickel. The nickel is mined in Canada (Eh?). According to one article I read, the area around the mine is so dead that NASA tests moon rovers there. Which I'm not sure entirely makes sense, but we'll go with it. Once mined the nickel is shipped to Europe, then China, then Japan, and then finally back to the US as a Prius battery. So far, this is not biding well for the Prius. One study found that the Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over its lifetime of 100,000 miles. The Hummer costs only $1.95 per mile and is expected to last for 300,000 miles. Yes, I hear the crickets chirping too. Can we just take a moment to be dumb-founded?
Well fortunately the story doesn't end there. As I said, the details of the article are sketchy, biased, and some claim just plain wrong. Check out the reply post here for a discussion of some of the issues. Some argue that the environmental impact of producing the car is offset by the savings in gas usage. Others claim that if you use this logic, it makes much more sense to buy a cheap, fuel-efficient car and make some modifications to make it even more fuel efficient. And what about biodiesel? One also must consider the fact that Toyota has a recycling program in place for their batteries. Tree-hugger has another great sample of the discussion surrounding this issue.
I think the bottom line here is that maybe hybrid cars aren't everything we've dreamed they could be. The reality of the matter is that hybrids aren't making as big an impact as we'd like to think they are. Should we all go out and buy Hummers? No. Could hybrids be distracting us from the bigger issue at hand? Maybe. Are they preventing us from popularizing and using better alternatives? Probably. Do I still want one? ...Yes. Especially in that light sagey/seafoam green.
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