Wherever David Freeman goes, he snaps energy efficiency into place.
As President of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, he's helped introduce the world's first all electric cargo truck.
This massive truck is the most powerful electric truck in the world.
It can lug a 60,000 pound cargo container at 40 mph., and go for 60 miles on a single hour charge.
It only takes a few hours to recharge up to four trucks at a time.
And with the extraordinary cost of diesel fuel, wow!
Global warming? This is a true no pollution big rig!
BIG news, friends.
While there are dirty ships and trucks at either end of the electric big rig, efforts are underway to clean them, too. It's all part of the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles Clean Air Action Plan.
Are you listening container ports around the world?
Can you emulate the Port of Los Angeles attempts at carbon emission reductions?
If you head a port elsewhere, learn more about electric port trucks and tractors at www.portoflosangeles.org
At Port of Los Angeles there's approximately 2 million cargo truck trips within a five to ten mile range in a year. With a typical idling engine that's a lot of pollution and fuel.
Cargos of apples, Toshiba computers, not to mention tons of clothes, like a portion of Made In China items in my closet, need to be moved off the ships and into trucks.
While I'm not proud of the fact I own worldwide products that reached me through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, transported by diesel trucks-- so uncool, so uncarbon neutral, so polluting--I'm heartened to know that leadership at the Port of Los Angeles combined with South Coast Air Quality and Management is on the ball.
The electrical ball, that is.
They helped fund the non-polluting big rig, and put funding in place for more port electric vehicles. 20 tractors and 5 trucks to start, and a new plant in which to create 'em along with the coveted green job workforce.
A new tax revenue source needed by California.
Way to go.
The initial investment for this clean machine, at around half a million dollars, isn't cheap by normal standards, but nothing's normal anymore.
As Mr. Freeman has said,
"As a civilization we're on death row."
He's not talking war, he's talking disasterous effects from global warming.
The question is will we use tax dollars to fund creation of a clean sky or continue to destroy in the name of a war to keep our hands on a dwindling oil supply?
You decide, and write your representative with the answer. That's how progress continues in America.
The Port of Los Angeles' clean air efforts are impressive.
Now let's create more electric trucks and vehicles here, and everywhere. And solar and wind energy to plug into.
To read more about how as a civilization we can get off coal, oil and nuclear energy, and onto renewable energy instead, I recommend Mr. Freeman's book: Winning Our Energy Independence, which I reviewed here.
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