• Make an electric powered motorcycle.  Batteries / electric engines can give a lot of torque immediately, which bikers seem to like.  Motorcycles don’t have to carry all the extra weight that cars do for safety mechanisms.  And they generally already tend to be a secondary vehicle for short trips, which seems like it would be an ideal niche to start getting consumers to try electric on a large scale.  Batteries also tend to suffer in cold climates and really cold weather – again, not a problem for motorcycles.
• Use the heat absorbed by roads during the day to generate electricity.  If you can absorb it to use it for energy and keep the roads at a more steady temperature, you’ll have less plowing/scraping wearing on the road, and less buckling and overall less stress on the material.  Use the heat they retain into the evening and the cool they retain into the morning as a sort of geothermal pump or Stirling engine, or something.  This would also help to reduce the heat island effect that city centers have.
• Use the snow on the side of a mountain to reflect the sun onto a specific point as a solar concentrater.  You could potentially put a giant mylar type sheet over the whole area too to reflect more light.  Use a Stirling engine to take advantage of the difference in heat between the heat from the concentrated sun and the cold of the surrounding air.
• Put heat insulators below the burners on stoves so you don’t just heat the air around the coil – force all of the heat up to the surface of the pan, so all of it has to transfer away that way.  Be able to adjust the size of the surface that is being heated so you get full contact with the whole pan, no more no less, and, that way you don’t need several different sized burners / parts.  Make the are area of the surface that is being heated light up so people know right where to put the pan.  Or even better yet, have a sensor that can tell where the pan is and how big it is, and just heat that area.

Source

Mainly, because I thought it was interesting that three of the top five largest (publicly traded) companies in the world are oil companies, and the fifth is a car manufacturer.

Jump forward a year (to the 2008 metrics), and the top four are exactly the same, in the exact same order.  Oh, but who’s in the five slot?  Toyota.  GM was at ninth.  And the rest of the top ten isn’t too short of oil companies either:

1. Wal-Mart
2. Exxon Mobil
3. Shell
4. BP
5. Toyota
6. Chevron
7. ING
8. Total (a European oil company)
9. GM
10. ConocoPhillips

Source: CNN Money via Wikipedia

Oh, and be sure not to let pesky little things like “facts” or “rational thought” get in your way:

Image via Architecture 2030.  Especially note the time scale.

What we really need here are some good chants that people can mindlessly repeat in a near zombie like fashion (such as “Brains. Brains!”), but instead of spreading idiocy (or undead-ness, wait, those are the same), spreading sane, rational thought.

A few suggestions:

• “Solar, Baby, Solar!”
• “Blow me! I’m a turbine! Blow me!”
• “Cars like hemp too!  Go, bio fuels, go!”
• “Walk, ride a bike, use public transit where available, keep your vehicle well maintained, drive sensibly, be sure your house is well insulated, turn off lights and appliances you’re not using, don’t go shopping if you don’t need something, consume less, and value people and experiences over stuff!!!!!!!”

Okay, so the last one is a little low on chant-ablity, but good for near breathless screaming.  Other thoughts for slogans?