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The Solar Taxi is a 3-wheeled solar powered car that started its world journey on 11 July. The car is driven by Swiss teacher Louis Palmer.

The Solar Taxi at UN Headquarters, Vienna.

The official site is http://www.solartaxi.com/ [but it is a terrible site; badly organised (a hodge-podge of languages) and with some links going to pure advertising sites]. After a lot of persistence, I finally managed to find the English language blog Solartaxi.

I was surprised at first to read these negative comments from Off-Grid about Solar Taxi, but I have to agree that there seems to be a large “hype coefficient” with this venture.

However, I wish Palmer well and I hope the journey raises awareness of what has been possible for many years, and must become a reality soon.

Oil Storm

I saw the drama Oil Storm last night. This is a chilling story (made in 2005, before Katrina) of some very real possibilities, some of which have subsequently come to pass:

• A large hurricane destroys the oil facilities in the US gulf states
• Terrorists attack oil facilities in the Middle East
• The US economy plunges into a depression, with shortages of all basic supplies
• A crash on Wall Street
• The Chinese outbid the US for oil

See the summary of Oil Storm on Wikipedia, some trailers at FX and this commentary.

Oil’s days are numbered. Sell your SUVs. Sell your Hummers. Go green.