Lingat 1

Christopher Lingat
Prof. Keynejad
English 115
6 December 2016
Solution to Pollution
It is a great burden to reside in the county of Los Angeles, as inhabitants live in constant
distress because anyone who drives a car is met with inevitable traffic on a daily basis, and
anyone unfortunate enough to be a pedestrian in these streets is breathing in air that is polluted
by factories and these very vehicles that are causing traffic. As a result of the pollution, many
children are growing up with asthma and other respiratory problems. Traffic causes road-rage
and increases the likelihood that people will be late to work or school, increasing stress levels as
people struggle to make it to their destinations on time.
Clearly this county is in need of a solution to these problems, and it should be one that
benefits all citizens in multiple ways. I am saying that Los Angeles needs to manually power
everything in the county, from cars to buildings, through the use of exercise machines since we
are running out of fossil fuels. This solution can benefit Angelenos in many ways. First and
foremost, we will have a power source that does not necessarily run out, unless of course,
humans die out, but what need will there be for energy sources if there are no humans to use
them anyway? This will also solve the traffic problem in LA, people will have to power their
cars in order to drive them, which takes extra time and effort. Because of the extra effort
required, many drivers will turn to different means of transportation such as public transit,
carpooling, biking, or even travelling on foot. Another benefit from this, which is absolutely

Lingat 2

huge, is that through physically powering the county, Los Angeles will be solving the obesity
epidemic that the whole United States appears to be suffering from.
I have taken it upon myself to calculate all elements of the equation that is how much
physical labor must be put in to power the county, and the results are nothing less than relieving.
As of 2014, California was the state with the highest amount of drivers, with almost twenty-five
million licensed drivers, a vast amount larger than that of the second highest state, Texas which
has less than sixteen million licensed drivers (statista.com). Now Los Angeles holds one tenth of
the California population, so theoretically, lets say that there are about 2.4 million licensed
drivers in the county. With 2.4 million people taking a daily exercise on their stationary bike or
treadmill, and the fact that Los Angeles has used almost 70 billion kilowatts of energy in the past
year, and with the average bicycle powered generator generating about 100 watts an hour, it
would only require each driver to exercise for 292 hours in the year, which translates to less than
an hour a day, to power all of Los Angeles (ca.gov). On the vehicular side of things, it is
reasonable to have one mile of running or biking on a treadmill or bike to generate enough
energy to drive one mile, this would allow for fuel efficiency with limits that only the driver
controls.
Why is renewable energy even a thing that we have to think about, can we not just keep
using fossil fuels to power everything like we have been doing? I am afraid that is not possible
anymore. Besides the fact that the emissions given off by burning fossil fuels are contributing to
global warming and effectively tearing a hole in our ozone layer, fossil fuels are running out.
Petroleum, the oil that is collected from deep underground to use as fuel is created by dead
organisms such as plants and marine animals going through hundreds of thousands of years of
heating and pressure to eventually become the fluid that we use as fuel today. The reason that we

Lingat 3

cannot simply just create more petroleum is that it is not exactly a quick process, as we are
consuming fuel far faster than we can replenish it, and the reason that many of these organisms
were able to stay in the earth long enough to transform them is that most of this has occurred
millions of years ago, and currently, there are evolved bacteria and other organisms that can
breakdown things like plants and animals, that didnt exist before. It appears that there is no
other hope to fix our energy problem. We just have to work it out.
With such a large amount of drivers, many accidents occur yearly in Los Angeles, so
many that auto accidents in California account for nearly 10% of all deaths and injuries that
happen in the United States (hg.org). New laws should be put into effect that require all drivers
to exercise for at least two hours a day in order to power their homes and the rest of the city. Any
extra power that residents need will require extra exercise in order to meet their needs, this of
course includes powering their vehicles. Other potential alternatives such as solar power and
other sources that harness energy through nature have already been struck down as inefficient
and an absolute waste of time, because it just takes too much time to build solar farms and wind
turbines. On top of that, finding places to put these things are a hassle in such densely populated
areas such as Los Angeles county, its not as if there is plenty of desert in Southern California
that is open and gets plenty of sunlight year round. Putting solar panels on rooftops is not an
option because solar panels will ruin the aesthetic pleasure of any decent roofing in the county
anyway. That is why a human-powered Los Angeles is a win-win solution to our problems.
The first outcome of this will be that as a result of the extra work required to be a regular
driver in LA, many drivers will look to alternatives which will ultimately lower the amount of
drivers on roadways, causing less traffic and thus nullifying the previously stated problems that
traffic causes. The other outcome is that as a result of constant exercise, all licensed drivers in the

Lingat 4

county will be more physically fit, this has many benefits in itself. In order to fuel their bodies to
meet the daily quota for exercise, drivers will be changing their diets to meet their nutritious
needs and will have more energy for daily life and work. They say that just as an object in
motion tends to stay in motion, an active human tends to stay active regularly. Forced exercise
will lead to people feeling the urge to go outside for more exercise. With less pollution in the air,
the outside world will just be a more pleasant place to be, rather than being locked up indoors all
day. In no time, the required exercise will be merely a warm-up for the average licensed driver.
Another implementation for the new exercise system is that it can also be used as
punishment for tickets and so on. For every minute that a vehicle is parked over the time limit,
the owner of the vehicle would be subject to that many minutes on an elliptical. Also, new
drivers who are testing for their license will be subject to an endurance test that would measure if
they are fit enough to meet the daily exercise requirements in order be a functioning member of
society.
The exercise energy system has already been tried and tested in other countries, mainly in
Europe, as I have colleagues there to confirm this for me. Italy has had this system in effect since
the development of automobiles there and it is proven to be efficient. The majority of the country
travels by foot or bicycle, and this has nothing to do with the fact that many streets are narrow or
that there is a whole city that is basically all rivers. Even in Spain, they have taken into account
the physical energy required to power their country, so they have everyone take a nap in the
middle of the day to recuperate, thus the birth of the siesta.
So with this ingenious proposal that I have so originally thought of myself, I think that it
is possible to change the way our country looks at Los Angeles. We will no longer be the county
with the worst traffic ever and terrible air due to pollution, we will be known as the most energy

Lingat 5

efficient county as well as the most physically fit. Its time we stop biking away from our
problems, we have to run things differently. I dont think that there is a single system in existence
that is more beneficial to our society than this, and if I were to be proven wrong, birds would be
able to fly, and global warming would exist.

Lingat 6

Works Cited
Electricity Consumption by County. Electricity Consumption by County,
ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbycounty.aspx.
Gauch, Paul, Alan C Brent, and Theodor W von Backstrm. "Concentrating Solar Power:
Improving Electricity Cost And Security Of Supply, And Other Economic Benefits."
Development Southern Africa, vol. 31, no. 5, Sep 2014, pp. 692-710. Academic Search
Premier,

http://libproxy.csun.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&d b=aph&AN=97509061&site=ehost-live
Hg.org. Hg.org, www.hg.org/article.asp?id=28469.
Mirowsky, Jaime E., et al. "Repeated Measures Of Inflammation, Blood Pressure, And Heart
Rate Variability Associated With Traffic Exposures In Healthy Adults." Environmental
Health: A Global Access Science Source, vol. 14, no. 1, Aug 2015, pp. 1-12. Academic
Search Premier,
http://libproxy.csun.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&d
b=aph&AN=109221907&site=ehost-live
Ong, S. et al. Land-Use Requirements for Solar Power Plants in the United States. Jan. 2013,
doi:10.2172/1086349.
Perez, Laura, et al. "Near-Roadway Pollution And Childhood Asthma: Implications For
Developing "Win-Win" Compact Urban Development And Clean Vehicle Strategies."
Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 120, no. 11, Nov 2012, pp. 1619-1626.
Academic Search Premier,

Lingat 7

http://libproxy.csun.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&d
b=aph&AN=83651289&site=ehost-live
Total Number of Licensed Drivers in the U.S. - by State 2014 | Statistic. Statista,
www.statista.com/statistics/198029/total-number-of-us-licensed-drivers-by-state/.