I Hate Internal Combustion

I’ve grown to hate Internal Combustion engines.

We have never gotten along. Every device I’ve ever owned that featured Infernal Combustion, from leaf-blowers to chainsaws to lawn-tractors to automobiles, has given me nothing but grief. I detested them all. (At least until I discovered Hondas. They run forever, and are mostly grief-free. Sadly, they are not guilt-free.)

Ever since my cross-country bike adventure, I’ve found myself driving even more slowly than usual. I’ve pretty much always driven like an old man (fuel economy, don’t you know), but after spending 65 days at 11 MPH, 65 MPH is terrifying.

From an innocent weed-wacker to a tractor-trailer rig, the sound and smell of all internal combustion engines is loathsome. I rode a few hundred miles through the oil/gas-boom of North Dakota, and came to realize that everything about that production is dirty, loud, smelly, and ugly.

Through most of the oil-boom territory, I felt like I was pedaling through Tolkien’s Mordor. The Earth looked scorched; there were huge piles of dirt and gravel and unsavory looking pools of very uninviting liquid. Brutish looking equipment, often featuring giant, nasty burn-off pipes, dotted the landscape. Heavy equipment rumbled to and fro.







The extraction process is dirty, loud, smelly, and ugly.
Transportation to the refinery is dirty, loud, smelly, and ugly.
The refining is dirty, loud, smelly, and ugly.
Delivery of the final product is dirty, loud, smelly and ugly.
Consumption for fuel is dirty, loud, smelly, and ugly.

And that’s all before even talking about the grave environmental concerns associated with burning fossil fuels, which just makes it all seem even more dirty, loud, smelly, and ugly.

Oil does have other less nasty uses, but about 75% of the world’s production is simply burned for energy.

Prior to riding through North Dakota, I rode through the Montana High-Line, which features miles and miles of clean, quiet, odorless, and beautiful windmills. The contrast couldn’t have been more stark.



Yes, I drive a gas-powered car. I have little choice. But I did buy an electric lawn mower! It’s lower maintenance, quieter, and easier to start. And the day I can afford it, I’ll be behind the wheel of a Tesla. (That is, unless driver-less cars take over beforehand, which I’m all for, but that’s another subject.)

One hundred and fifty years of enduring rapid-fire controlled explosions is enough. Internal-combustion finished the job started by its cousin, external-combustion (steam-engines), which launched the industrial revolution. It has served its purpose. It’s time to thank internal-combustion for a job well done, pin a medal on its chest and let it join all the steam-engines at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. It’s time to move on.

There is more than ample renewable energy at our fingertips. Battery technology has made huge strides. We, as a society, just lack the political will to change, which is fomented by the entrenched oil companies and the politicians they own. The sooner we can wean ourselves off fossil-fuels and convert every weed-wacker, lawn mower, ATV, motorcycle, automobile, truck, semi, freight-train, and powerplant to renewable energy, the better off we’ll all be.

Then let the healing of the Earth begin.