What technological advance has caused more harm than good?

[suneel112]

This is gonna sound crazy, but...

The invention of the gasoline automobile has been extremely good for this country and this world in the 20th century. However, the harm is soon to come...

It has created an unsustainable economy based on fossil fuels. Big, heavy SUVs (especially Hummers) are the worst. In terms of moving the person or the goods concerned, SUV and Hummer engines are less than 1 percent efficient. That means that almost all of the gasoline is wasted. As you know, oil is a fossil fuel (nonrenewable), and it is running out, and production has either recently peaked or will peak in a short while. In the mean time, however, we have made an economy so dependent on oil that even a small reduction in production can cause a recession (I.E. the 1970s). What would the economy be like with, say 20 percent less oil production? 40 percent? HALF?? LESS??? It would be in total and complete ruin.

This is not even considering the vast ecological impact such as global warming that an oil economy has had on the environment. I will not rant about it here. There are plenty of websites for that.

Meanwhile, the leaders (of both major parties) down in Washington DC are idling around about energy policy ("Nukular" is not sustainable, at least not by the current methods, and "clean coal" pollutes). Understandably so. It would cause a political party great damage when such a policy is declared, and it would probably cause problems in the short term. In the long-term, however, there is a sustainable economy that will be there for many generations to come.

We are engineers, though, and can (or will be able to) solve these pressing issues. However, it is time for an honest, organized, and major endeavor. It is unfortunately too late to look for "Market Solutions". That time would have been in the 1970s and 80s, and everyone knows how the previous energy independence effort ended. It is time for an enormous bipartisan effort to solve this problem (Although, with the same cost of the current Iraq war per year over five years, will probably get us over 90 percent to the goal). It is time for nothing less than a new Manhattan Project, to gain energy independence.

P.S.: Such a project would also inspire millions of Americans to become engineers (and join FIRST) and would guarantee them with important, high-paying jobs.