Hybrid - An Eco T Shirt that starts arguments.

 

I've chosen this design for a particular reason. I want to highlight a very troubling scenario coming towards on the ecological front. Simply smugness. Smugness is pervading every sector of research and manufacturing. A nod of the head towards the direction of carbon reduction is praised as a breakthrough. If the world (and by that I mean corporations and governments, and in that order) have to focus on research and development rather than merely reducing the emissions by a few percent and then spending a fortune on 'Green Hype'.

The 'Siamese Mule' to put it politely, represents state of play in modern science. We don't like what we've got, so as in fashion and music, and the Arts in general, the powers-that-be decide that our future includes, letting the power plants create all the pollution, which leads to the whole Nuclear Power argument which I feel is a complete misnomer anyway. Imagine being born with radiation sickness, then tell me its a good idea. Our short-term approach to managing the earth will mean within a few hundred years the seals on all those radioactive dumps will break, and this planet will die.

If we really want clean energy then we have to knock this Hybrid thing on the head. The cleanest ways to travel are walking, cycling, sail, horse riding and so on. But even these can to an extent be 'polluting to the environment'.

Consider the whole concept of the 'Carbon Footprint'. People are for the main part ignoring it, mainly because, unlike the myth perpetrated by government and media, this is not a market-led world economy. Infact it is a corporate-led economy.

Firstly there are the raw materials and energy used in the manufacturing, packaging, distribution and marketing of the product. Cycling and sailing are the result of manufacture and production. The 'equipment' required takes vast amounts of energy to established vast factory production sites that source materials from around the world, freight them, ship them, piece them together then ship them out again to sell to the world. That's a lot of energy wasted!

Horses and people require food, and produce methane, humans who keep horses build stables, buy crops to feed them, require leather for their equipment, which means farming cattle, you could even count the power to run the slaughterhouse and tannery. But people, people are the worst.

There's only one thing worse than a bad idea and that's two bad ideas cobbled together in a half-witted Frankenstinian experiment that might help. Hey if you really want to help, how about solar wind hybrids? Stick a fan on the back and a panel on the roof and when you're charged up, the movement of the car spins the wind generator and hey presto - perpeptual motion!

We are a smug species and we have a right to be, we have had many glorious achievements in history, and many tragedies that we will surely survive, but we won't learn that in the end, our calculations regarding the state of our planet are vastly underestimated.

The only way to save the earth is to remove the human race. However, the earth is not in fact in danger, it is the so-called 'human's way of life'. Which in itself is predicated by its environment. If we're not careful the only transport we'll have left is a handful of very hungry, very tired, double-headed mules.

The hybridization of old ideas has simply produced new ones with little if no improvement for our future. We should be funnelling research grants into increasing the efficiency of solar and wind energies. Plus, a re-thinking of local resources, production, farming, decentralize everything you can. It's all ancient history, and it looks like we are returning there! Every heard of a Wind Mill? A Water Mill? A horse and cart? This I'm afraid will be the future if we don't stop playing with our science and actually focus it on the environment instead of what the corporations have already invested in and want to sell off before they listen to anyone else.