Hi-ho Silver

Ready, convenient transportation moves food and consumer durables all across our Earth. Its capability empowers the merchant class and gives the fortunate a new form of entertainment; tourism. Almost miraculously, the people of the United States travelled about 5.5 trillion passenger miles (8.8e12 km) in 2005 using trains, planes and automobiles.

Petroleum and its distillates lie chief amongst the sources of transportation’s energy. Yet, at one time the horse reigned (reined?) supreme. But, a typical horse can average only about 20 miles (32 km) a day if they had to travel every day of the year. Therefore, the people of the United States would need over 75 million horses to carry them the equivalent distance, assuming all travel was across land.

But, horses need care and maintenance. Principally, these herbivores need vegetation. Each working horse needs at least 2 acres (08. ha) of land upon which to graze. Therefore, to replace the mechanical machines by horses, the people of the United States would need 1.5 billion acres (6 million square kilometres). Their country currently uses 5 million square kilometres for both crops and pasture and has about 5 million horses. Little land remains for conversion to pasture land let alone the tenfold increase needed.

We can’t go back to yesterday’s technology to support today’s or tomorrow’s transportation needs. We will need to be smarter than that, or have much less movement.

  1. Distance
  2. Land Cover

Horse

Author’s picture


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