Environment & Energy

Hydrogen power is not new. It is also not without its perils. Just look at the Hindenburg in 1937. I would have to assume this project has addressed those issues and overcome them, or else it wouldn‘t be operating public transportation so powered. Bravo if they have! 100% emissions-free AND 100% safe is a goal that used to belong to the realm of science fiction up to now. Even horses aren‘t 100% emission-free, as anyone familiar with the term „horseshit“ will remind you.

I also wince at the term “free.” The service may be offered at no cost to riding passengers during the experimental period, and that‘s fine. But the research to develop the boat was not done by unpaid technicians. The material to build it was not donated by the companies that made them. The workers that built it did not do so for zero wages. Providing pure hydrogen is not something done on a whim. The crew operating the boat is not doing it without pay for six months. The people working the docks from which the boat departs and leaves have not offered to work those hours without pay. Like education in Germany, the cost of the service is being borne by the taxpayers via their paying for the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority. This is actually a good thing in my opinion, like the method of financing education in Germany. But it is not „free.“ If it isn’t being provided by slave labor, nothing really is. This is as it should be, but the people who are really paying for it deserve to know it.