t’s a story that’s older than me, and if you spend any time in a bar full of United Auto Workers, you’ll hear someone repeat it for you. Apparently, there once was this great inventor who built a car engine that could be driven forever on one tank of fuel, and the auto companies and oil barons conspired to have this great entrepreneur whacked. This Magic Engine is now buried in the secret vaults of the Some Major Motor Company right next to the cure for cancer. There are many versions of the story, but the plots are all similar. Sometimes it runs on gas and has a 200 MPG carburetor, sometimes it runs on water, occasionally the engine produces more fuel than it consumes, but the moral is always the same: Evil businessmen want to keep us dependent on petroleum. I’ve never understood why Amish people live without automobiles, and the petroleum Mafia has allowed it to continue for over a century; perhaps only because Amish still use kerosene.
   In the movie Field of Dreams, we were introduced to the philosophy: “If you build it, they will come.” Unfortunately, Major League Baseball attendance at new municipal stadiums across the Nation have disproved this thesis. There is a similarly false assumption, that if you legislate something, it will happen; regardless of feasibility. If Thomas Edison ran for office, the formula for invention would have been: 1% inspiration, 1% perspiration. and 98% legislation. I believe that the myth of the Magic Engine is chiefly responsible for most energy legislation. There is an assumption among many, that if we threaten auto manufacturers with imprisonment, fines, and perhaps even death, they will send a lackey down to the vaults and produce the wondrous invention they’ve hidden there.
   The first time that Congress attempted to legislate the Magic Engine into existence was with the CAFE restrictions. Everyone pretty much expected that the new standards would only require a minor retrofit. (Remember the Wankle Rotary Engine?) The wrong questions were asked when CAFE was passed. The general public was never asked if they would prefer their cars twice the price, half the size, and as flimsy as a beer can. When they heard about the possibility of a fifty mile per gallon car, they naturally assumed it would look like a 1970 Chevy Impala, and that sounded like a good idea.
   Discounting the exceptions of teenage girls and middle aged men, Americans love big cars. We prefer a four seat vehicle, big enough to haul a piece of furniture, and with as much power as the acceptance corporation and insurance company will allow. We like our cars safe, fast, and comfortable; with the room to live in for a day or two if necessary.
   In the sixties, even the environmentally conscious hippies preferred the largest, most spacious Volkswagen, the Microbus. Today, the modern environmental fashion plate drives an uber-tiny car with a reassuring name like the “Smart” car, or the Honda “Insight.” It amuses me that environmentalists buy products with names to convince themselves that their behavior is really intelligent, as appearances might lead someone to speculate otherwise. It would seem to the casual observer that driving a virtual golf cart at expressway speed, alongside an overloaded gravel truck is not an educated choice, but by repeating the name of the car, you might feel better in these high stress driving conditions. Just grip your steering wheel tightly and repeat after me, “I’m driving a Smart car, I’m driving a Smart car!” Most of these cars derive their energy savings solely from their diminutive size. They are so small and uncomfortable that nobody likes to sit in them. Hence, if you own one, you’re friends are never going to let you drive anywhere, and you save money and gas by making them pay for it.
   CAFE seemed like a good compromise, if we ask the auto manufacturers to just bump up the mileage a little bit at a time, they won’t have to embarrass themselves by admitting that the knew the secret along. Meanwhile, the oil companies would forgive this impertinence because they would see that the auto companies had no choice outside compliance, that they were forced to release the Magic Engine Technology, and would spare them the gangland massacre that befell the last upstart company that tried to sell a zero fuel vehicle.
   The SUV market was driven by CAFE. Were it not for those regulations, cars would still be made out of steel, steelworkers would be clocking overtime and you would never have seen the ridiculous juxtaposition of an offroad vehicle driving through downtown DC. (Even though Washington potholes have the reputation of dwarfing the most rugged mountain terrain.) The human need for spacious, safe, luxury; and the inability to find it in post-CAFE sedans drove customers into the SUV market. The recently thwarted attempt to apply those standards to SUVs was an attempt to reverse this consumer driven trend. Thank goodness for the victory of common sense over emotion; and perhaps the myth of the 200 MPG carburetor has finally been laid to rest.
   Unfortunately, believers of Magic Engine technology are now behind the push towards alternative fuels. Regardless of popular environmental rhetoric, energy sources outside of fossil fuels do not exist. They are much like an honest lawyer: hard to find, and perhaps mythological.
   The truth about gasoline is that it contains a high amount of energy in a very small volume. Very few of us really sit down and try to picture how much energy is contained in a gallon of gas. Ever try to push your car? Try it sometime. Load up your minivan with your spouse and kids, and maybe a weeks worth of groceries, and try pushing it for a block or two. Uphill. When you get out of the hospital, imagine pushing it for a mile. The amount of gasoline required to perform that monumental task would fit inside of an ordinary champagne snifter.
   The idea of a perpetual motion machine has probably occurred to everybody at some point in their lives. If you hook a generator up to an electric motor, the motor could turn the generator and electricity from the generator would power the motor. If you attach a large enough generator to this contraption, you could pull the excess electricity off, and it would be free energy. Unfortunately, the Laws of Thermodynamics predate the EPA, and are enforced more rigorously. You cannot take more energy out of a system than you put in, and friction will eventually cause any engine to wind down unless the energy is replenished from an outside source.
   This is the very reason why electric cars will not solve any energy problems. Electric cars are called emission free, because proponents are short sighted. Yes there is no exhaust from an electric car, but the electricity has to come from somewhere. Electric cars have exhaust pipes, they’re just down at the power plant. In fact, because of generation and transmission losses, you have to put three watts of energy into the grid for every watt delivered to your home. Therefore, roughly triple the energy has to be burned to move a car electrically, than it would if it were consumed right under the hood.
   We will probably still generate the majority of our electricity by burning fossil fuels well into the next century, as wind and solar are not economically competitive, and nuclear scares the pants off everyone. The environmentalists will have you believe that there is a huge mob of goons hired by the fossil fuel industry, working covertly to insure that we keep using coal, gas, and oil; but the truth is, wind and solar are high priced. There is little environmental benefit to these sources and they’re both really ugly. They will probably never rise out of the two demographics where they are most popular, survivalist and environmental chic.
   Your average windfarm will indiscriminately kill about two birds a day 2 and sometimes even nails an endangered one. The most modern windfarm has yet to achieve 35% efficiency, and will cost twice as much to operate as a traditionally fueled plant over a twenty year life span.
   Manufacturing Solar Cells requires highly toxic chemicals. In order to supply myself with enough solar capability to power my house, I would need a 2150 square foot solar array, and it would pay for itself in just under 95 years. Unfortunately, the warranty is only good for twenty-five. And don’t tell me just to turn down the heat and sit in the dark either. If I wanted to live like that, I would have moved to Eastern Europe long ago.
   Which leads us to the Hydrogen powered vehicle. News reports on the progress of Hydrogen fueled cars continually refer to the problems associated with cost of production, and infrastructure required to make the conversion. Occasionally the danger is referred to, but rarely in conjunction with pictures of the Hindenberg or the Challenger Space Shuttle, both results of Hydrogen mishaps. What is never mentioned is the fact that Hydrogen fueled cars will neither reduce pollution, global warming gasses, or our dependence on foreign fuel.
   The wealth of support for Hydrogen comes from a very basic knowledge of High School chemistry, within the grasp of most environmentalists. Burning Hydrogen produces a lot of energy, and water vapor. This makes it the cleanest fuel available. Meanwhile you can get hydrogen from the most plentiful substance on earth: ordinary water. (It is possible to produce Hydrogen from Natural Gas, but such refinement requires an energy loss. It is more efficient and a much easier to convert standard gasoline vehicles to run on Natural Gas.) The problem arises when you realize that the only way to get Hydrogen out of water is to put electricity into it. It’s like replacing airplane engine with emission free rubber bands, you still need some form of energy to wind it up. Hydrogen and fuel cell technology is just another version of the electric car, with just one more level of separation. Removing Hydrogen from water is an energy intensive task that requires twice as much energy than the procedure will produce. So if you are using standard methods of generating electricity, you will have to burn the equivalent of six gallons of fuel to produce one gallon of Hydrogen through electrolysis.
   Eventually, petroleum reserves might become so scarce that we have to look elsewhere for our energy requirements, although I don’t think that will happen in my lifetime. Rather than mourn the fact that the Magic Engine is nothing more than wishful fiction, we should celebrate the things that petroleum makes possible. Machinery has made hard labor only necessary in penal institutions. The only constraints on the traveling ability of the average American are political. Thanks to central heat and air conditioning, we spend our lives in a controlled climate that mimics Hawaii; a splendid 72° year round. We all live richer, longer, healthier lives than previous generations, and our food supply is so abundant, that we pay people to stop growing it. When problems in the Mideast make you worry about our oil based economy, just remember: We can win public support to tap oil reserves here, long before they can grow food in a desert.