Trendy Trendoids and Their Latest Trend

Running dirty old diesel engines on 'clean' vegetable oil is the latest trend. Darryl Hannah does it, so it must be better for the universe, right?

Wrong.

Vegetable matter can never be a full replacement for fossil fuels. If a few trendoids think they are doing something good by keeping nasty old Mercedes diesel engines running, that's fine. If a few donut shops and fast food joints want to dump their used cooking oils on these folks, that's fine too. Plus, running vehicles on straight vegetable oil, is illegal in the United States.

But if you try and scale up this process as a legitimate replacement for eeeevil oil, you run into some big, big problems.

Of course, articles like the LAT article above will never delve into that, and the trendoids who adopt this wonderful trendiness will never think beyong the slogans and short-term thinking behind doing what they do. (the LAWeekly did an article, even featuring some of the same trendoids (Kristina Wong and her pink Mercedes (pictured above) seem to get around), and the same mechanic, a few weeks ago, they mention the cons more than the LAT article did, but that article still ignores the inherent unsustainable nature of vegetable oil as energy source)

Nuclear power is the only (nearly) carbon free source of energy large enough to serve the energy needs of a modern information society. If most electricity came from nuclear power in the USA (like in France or Belgium), then the 'carbon footprint' of every US citizen would be greatly reduced.

If these trendoids really want to save the planet, they'll insist that a nuclear powerplant be built in Silverlake (I'd love to see one right here in Santa Monica, especially one that also turns sea water into drinking water).

Somehow, I don't see that happening, or the LAT doing a cutesy article on trendy nuclear power proponents.