Is 100 MPG Ambitious Enough? - Saul Griffith

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/01/16/Saul_Griffith_Climate_Change_Recalculated

Inventor Saul Griffith explores methods to conserve energy consumption and better our quality of life, including a dramatically reduced speed limit. Would you drive 30 mph to save the environment?

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Engineer, environmentalist, and entrepreneur Saul Griffith examines the numerical reality of the fight against climate change.

Drawing from a personal assessment of his own energy needs, Griffith argues that we not only need to switch to alternative energies, we also need to drastically reduce their consumption in order to prevent a global catastrophe.

Griffith connects personal actions and global climate change by analyzing his own carbon consumption.

Dr. Saul Griffith has multiple degrees in materials science and mechanical engineering and completed his PhD in Programmable Assembly and Self Replicating machines at MIT. He is the co-founder of numerous companies including: Low Cost Eyeglasses, Squid Labs, Potenco, Instructables.com, "HowToons" and Makani Power. Saul has been awarded numerous awards for invention including the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Collegiate Inventor's award, and the Lemelson-MIT Student prize. A large focus of Griffith's research efforts are in minimum and constrained energy surfaces for novel manufacturing techniques and other applications. Griffith holds multiple patents and patents pending in textiles, optics, nanotechnology, and energy production. Griffith co-authors children's comic books called "HowToons" about building your own science and engineering gadgets with Nick Dragotta and Joost Bonsen. Griffith is a technical advisor to Make magazine and Popular Mechanics. Saul is a columnist and contributor to Make and Craft magazines.

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[L8nitedave]

Necessity is the mother of invention. It is simply a matter of understanding what is necessary.

[PseudoVoodoo]

You got it the wrong way around. Corporations have tailor-made our needs so that we become reliant on them.

We're not living in the type of democracy you assume we are. We're in a spectatorship, not a participatory democracy. All consent is manufactured to meet the needs of the corporations and government who are made up of a social elite...the type we can't touch because we have no real power other than a vote. And even then you're voting for the same elite no matter what brand name they have.

[captinseperoth]

I would love a normal diesel engine that can run on natural gas....which gets 100mpg...and non of this hybrid..laboratory bullshit we get shoved down our throats.

Green bio fuels is at least a half century before it's even remotely main stream...and everyone is using it...including the military.

in the mean time we have thousands of years worth of natural gas,in our back yards...this natural gas is much cleaner than oil...but then again natural gas comes from oil...

[luedriver]

everyone know 80 km/hr in top gear is economical...

hybrid cars run on electricity below that so of course it would be more economical, UNTIL the battery runs out and then the engine not only will have to move the car but power up the battery as well...

also braking does power the battery only not nearly fast enough...

just saying, not trolling...

[LudicrousTachyon]

Yeah! Buy less! Hear that honey? Just kidding don't mean to be sexist. I personally don't buy much other than food. There is really no need, but we are driven by society to compete with our neighbors. Keep your stuff in good condition and you don't need to buy another. I've had my laptop for four years, and I'll have it until it dies.

[afthefragile]

He looks like Adam Savage from Mythbusters!!

[lostinmaya]

Right On! Buy less of better stuff! Never heard it stated but have tried to practice it my whole life.

[beseriousplease]

Wow. Just Wow. Those blasted academics!! What do you call the community you are in?

[m0nkeybl1tz]

Yeah, I'll say I have no idea about the nuclear stuff, though it certainly can't be good for us. But as for the consumer whatnot, it is exactly because we have a consumer/capitalist society that we need to change our habits. The corporations will always look for the cheapest solution to meet consumer demands, and it's up to us to set our demands higher.

[PseudoVoodoo]

m0nkeybl1tz,

No one asked - beyond the nature of propaganda and terrorising fear games - for thermonuclear weapons in order to obliterate masses of people. They have almost certainly played a massive part in this problem with our global atmosphere today almost more than anything else.

Society has been engineered for the purpose of us being the consumers of large corporate output. If what I consume is part of the problem, and this problem can be resolved, then the burden is NOT on my shoulders.

[m0nkeybl1tz]

Global warming is a natural event. Nobody disagrees with that. It also has a relation to carbon. Nobody disagrees with that either. Whether our cars, tv's, etc. are affecting that, that part's up for grabs. But do you really mind making a minor change to your life to potentially reduce a global disaster?