New World A-Comin'

[Monksdream]

The latest podcast from Freakonomics Radio was most enjoyable.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538045/freakonomics-radio

I've listened to it twice. I may listen again on a Sunday of a morning in Charlotte North Carolina while wishing I were still 12 years old fishing for sunfish in Stoney Creek where I grew up in Eastern North Carolina.

Way back when, once the Industrial Age got into full swing and folks moved to the cities to make things instead of growing things, the primary mode of transportation, aside from bicycles, which was actually a recent invention, relatively speaking, was with horses.

Just like any ICE vehicle the world depends on today, there was a problem int those days of unwanted by products. Instead of nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxides emitted from the tailpipes of ICE vehicles, the world had to deal with what was emitted from the tailpipe of a horse.

Collecting horse manure was a problem. The solution at the onset was relatively easy. Farmers would buy it. Horse manure is a source of nitrogen. All well and good. Except it got to a point there was so much available manure from horses that got so cheap to a point the farmers could buy all they needed. The rest was surplus manure with nowhere to go. So it got dumped into the sewers and then into the rivers and lakes or wherever there was available land.

Then along came the electric car in the early 1890s. Battery technology, such as it was at the time, was enough to solve the problem off all that manure. The electrification of the cities also resulted in the electric street cars.

Battery powered cars remained popular up until the early teens. But Karl Benz and his marvelous invention eventually made the battery powered horseless carriage obsolete.

The rest is history.

It seems we have come full circle.

I have often said, Ours truly remains the Age of Oil.

What is next?

Ours truly remains the Age of the Battery?