Auto-da-fe
Editorial
Copyright 1999 Washington Times
May 23, 1999
The Hindenberg - er, Old Town
Trolley - that went up in flames about a week ago after a possible
crash-caused leak
of its pressurized propane fuel tanks, makes one wonder about those
"alternative fuels" so frequently touted by
environmentalist tub-thumpers as the way to end our addiction to
demon gasoline. Maybe those
alternative fuels aren't such a good alternative after all.
Propane and compressed natural gas (CNG) may burn cleaner,
it's true - but they
also require extreme pressure to maintain their liquid state. That
means
pressurized fuel
cylinders mounted someplace on-board - someplace that could be
crushed-in
during an accident, with fiery results.
That's just what happened to Old Town
Trolley -again. So far two of the propane-fueled tour buses have
been reduced to
cinders; the first time was back in 1995 near the White House.
Luckily, no one
was killed in the most recent conflagration. But there's always
next time.
So why does Old Town
Trolley - not to mention other commercial operators in the city -
use the stuff when
gasoline is readily available? Well, there's the cachet of running
nothing but
"clean" vehicles, which Old Town and other outfits, such
as Clean Air Cab and
Washington Gas, employ to enhance their images as
upstanding corporate citizens. There's also money - as one might
expect.
Uncle Sam has special tax treats for users of alternative fuels
such as
propane, CNG and electricity.
So basically, subsidies and feel-good politics trump common
sense and
kindergarten economics.
All of this is driven by an irrational
phobia of regular unleaded - a fine-smelling product which, when
consumed in
the combustion chambers of a modern, fuel-injected engine, produces
almost no
harmful contaminants. More than 95 percent of tailpipe
"emissions" these days consists of harmless water vapor
and carbon dioxide. Gasoline is
also less
prone to blowing up because it's not stored under high pressure.
But of course gasoline is not as sexy as politically
voguish
"alternative fuels" - and so it gets sidelined in favor
of dangerous, unpredictable stuff that
smarter heads learned to avoid back in the 1930s.
They don't
call it
"auto-da-fe" for nothing.
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