Congressional PR Stunt Falls a Few Miles Short
January 9, 2009
Rep. Eric Massa, the newest elected member from NY, decided to play Leo DiCaprio for a day and insist he drive a hydrogen fuel cell car from NY to DC before his congressional swearing in. One problem: The trip to DC is just under 300 miles and the fuel cell car he had hoped to drive could only guarantee him 175-200 miles.
Not to fret. Massa crunched the numbers before he left and decided he’d have a second hydrogen car towed to a halfway point, in which he would then swap cars and continue his journey. At the end of each leg, the cars were then towed back to to their respective homes in New York.
Are you as baffled about this as we are?
Here’s how it went down. Massa drove one fuel cell car while a hybrid SUV towing an additional SUV followed along. Once he got half way, he switched to new fuel cell car. The empty fuel cell was then towed back by the first SUV. As he continued on his journey, the second SUV followed. Once Massa arrived in DC, the second SUV then towed the second fuel cell car back to NY.
We’re too tired to do the math, but even Al Gore might agree that the emissions released into the air for this stunt were far more than they would’ve been had he strapped on a hard hat and drove a bulldozer to DC.
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Sure it’s more energy to take two cars than just one, but if your goal is to promote green tech and try to disprove that all the talk 2 months ago about US automotive technology being in the stone-age, then this is the way to do it. It’s less energy and less money than trucking a refueling system to the halfway point. Until filling stations are easily available, which is really just a question of money and will, any lengthy trip with a zero-emission car will be a “stunt”.
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What a twat
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words fail me….. I’m sick of goverment people pulling these stunts, in England (where i’m from) an MP would ride his bike to work with a car following carrying his papers!! put them on the bike man! he may as well have been in the empty car??
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“This way to the Egress! An Egress the likes of which has never been seen!”
- P. T. Barnum
‘Anthropogenic climate change’ occupies a place of special honor in my “I-can’t-believe-I-used-to-take-this-sh#t-seriously” file.
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As a moron. Or, alternatively, as a fraud. So Massa wasted several times the amount of energy he needed
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Sheese! And these are the jokers setting policy for us poor folks who need to be saved from ourselves! I repeat, Sheese!!
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