Salt is a car-Sin-o-gen!

Don't call it a comeback - the realneo relaunch has begun and I dive headlong into the blogsphere via the seriously socially-conscious social network in NEO .. realneo.org [1]

This bellowing blustery blizzard blight has gotten me thinking.  Why have we been tagged with the dubious moniker 'rust belt' by automotive enthusiasts everywhere?  The answer is simple: we have quietly allowed for 'gross-salinization' of our roads and ultimately our ecosystem.  The salt ravages our vehicles, quietly eating away shiny new car finishes and underbodies - ultimately a moneymaker for the right vendors - car dealers, body shops, salt miners, the Cargills of the world, the city salting-machines and their workers.  There is a salt economy in the works and a powerful vested lobby that is thriving as a result - hence we see a continuation of salt-madness.

Shall we do a cost-analysis?  The salinization of our watersheds and lakes can't be a good thing - not to mention the cumulative effect on biodiversity and wildlife dependent upon these waters.  The stuff washes into our drainage systems, soils, and ravages our city biosystem - to the extent that city planners here must reconsider which plants they can select or even selectively breed for saline-resistance.  (Relative) safety is a benefit - we avert car and pedestrian crashes and skids - but at what true cost?  Costs that reach beyond road repair and auto aesthetics to our community and environmental health.

Such a simple thing we can stop to do a world of good.  Other states use gravel, sand, and other diverse eco-friendly solutions.  Why should we lag behind our forward-thinking counterparts like  Minnesota and Wisconsin, to name a couple.   Experts argue that excessive salting will not abate until we find an economically feasble, technolgically advanced solution - an elegant one nonetheless.   So we could consider alternative-energy powered (geothermal, solar, wind, etc) solutions that are already used by the affluent to heat their drive-and-walk ways.   This is certainly not cost-effective yet but points us in one R&D direction.   What about more eco-friendly agents we can apply in limited doses as an alternative - ethanol blends perhaps?   Should we escape underground (http://realneo.us/news/2007/02/05/project-genesis-garden-of-eden-ii [2]) and definitively explore subterranean alternatively-powered alternatives?

De-icing sustainably is the new Mandate - we must surely subvert this silly psychotic specificity sublimated within the sodium chloride economy. 

Now!