"Alternative fuel" means fuel that is

(a) for use in motor vehicles to deliver direct propulsion,

(b) less damaging to the environment than conventional fuels, and

(c) prescribed by regulation,

including, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, ethanol, methanol, propane gas, natural gas, hydrogen or electricity when used as a sole source of direct propulsion energy.

Source: Canadian Alternative Fuels Act.

While a good idea at heart, alternative fuels often suffer major complications in the implementation stage.

The perfect example of such is the electric car. Though it seems to use no fuel, it is mathematically as bad or worse than many people believe fossil fuels to be. The electric car receives its energy over inefficient power lines. An average of two thirds of the electricity sent over power lines is lost before it ever reaches a home, creating there a massive inefficiency in this form of alternative fuel. However, the inefficiency does not end there. The car is powered by a battery. Batteries are an inherently inefficient form of energy storage. Much energy is lost just while a battery is idle because the reactions continue even if the circuit is not completed. There also is the problem that energy is lost during the reactions to both recharge and use the battery. Please remember all of this wasted energy happens to be coming from a power plant which is likely burning fossil fuels or some other polluting thing. Then there are the safety and disposal problems.

Batteries are filled with chemicals that are usually highly hazardous to human health, sometimes fatally so. Should an electric car partake in an accident, it is possible that the battery may become punctured or shorted, thus leaking environmentally and healthfully hazardous chemicals all over a road. Should the battery become shorted, there is a good chance it will explode and seriously or fatally injure someone. Acid burns are very painful. Then, should a battery outlive its usefulness and need to be disposed of, those same dangerous chemicals need to be carefully transported and processed so that they do not contaminate the environment.

Perhaps someday an alternative to fossil fuels can be found, but we must consider all alternatives very carefully. Those who believe that the government is a lying, overcontrolling, fascist brainwashing organization must step back and consider that possibly those people that they have chosen to receive information from also may not have the most heavenly of motives.