Merde!
Posted on 11/21/2007 1:56:23 PM PST by Islander7
PARIS (Reuters) - French towns worried about fuel prices, pollution and striking transport workers need look no further than the horse.
Horses are a possible alternative for vehicles such as school buses and refuse trucks, say groups eager to pick up on global concerns about eco-friendly transport.
"It's all about sustainable development and bringing some humanity back to today's monotonous, machine-driven jobs," Stephane de Veyrac, from the French National Stud Organisation, said at this week's annual conference of French mayors.
De Veyrac's group says it is the first in France to offer consulting on a wide range of horse-powered vehicles that could also haul bottles and aid street sweeping.
"It is a serious alternative -- horses are already in use in over 70 towns as replacements for gasoline- and diesel-powered service vehicles," said de Veyrac, pointing to the 'Hippoville' prototype parked in the exhibition hall.
With prices starting at 11,562 euros ($17,090), this revamped horse-drawn carriage with disc brakes, signal lamps and removable seating, goes for around the same price as 170 barrels of crude oil.
De Veyrac's group was founded by Louis XIV's Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert to supply war horses for military campaigns.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
snicker
I enjoy laughing at goofy French nonsense as much as anyone, but...
If we’re being serious, this notion is being put forth by an equestrian organization, not the French government or even a typical French-thinking bunch of econuts. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine an American equestrian organization trying to get the horse re-involved in tasks they lost long ago.
MM (in TX)
Remember the old Rocky/Bullwinkle cartoons, there was a segment played about a Frenchman who lived on a hill.
Usually right after Professor Klyde Krashcop or in the general vacinity..
Every day, or week whatver, a parade came down the hill where he lived and the 'horse crap' collector trailer would go over a bump and dump the load into this guys house....
Then he would go into the "les pew, les disgusting..." as he shoveled out his house.
We now return to your regularly scheduled thread...
Merde!
“It’s also all about bringing horse manure and urine back to today’s streets, along with a host of epizootic diseases.”
LOL!
We know ‘the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain’...
But will the poop in France land mainly on the grass?
Never mind!
“It’s also all about bringing horse manure and urine back to today’s streets, along with a host of epizootic diseases.”
LOL!
We know ‘the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain’...
But will the poop in France land mainly on the grass?
Never mind!
“Mr. De Veyrac probably also doesn’t remember the piles of HORSE MANURE in the streets in the early 1900’s either!”
Did they ever get around to cleaning that stuff up?
Will they rethink this after the "disadvantaged youthful denizens" of the banlieues start overturning and burning "Hippovilles", to BBQ the horses?
Do you really think so?
Please consider that a motor only is producing fumes and consuming energy when it is on, which may be only a couple of hours a day. A horse on the other hand is consuming fuel, producing fumes and solid waste 24 hours a day.
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Small problem: You can't park a horse in the machine shed for the winter, after filling it with anti-freeze & draining the fuel tank.
You have to feed, water, and shovel every day, whether you're using it or not.
Which brings up the next problem: growing enough additional 'fuel' to keep them fed & watered, without losing crop land, disturbing euro-sacrosanct 'habitat', or running afoul of other EUroproblems.
A horse (or cat, for that matter) = a nice, useful, furry friend; 12,000,000 = a plague of Biblical proportions.
Driving a horse is a tremendous amount of fun. I used to drive, years ago. The only trouble is that it really does take quite awhile to groom and harness a driving horse, then hitch him. You can’t just jump in and turn the key; the process is not going to take less than twenty minutes. At the end of the drive you have to unharness, cool the horse out, and clean both your cart/phaeton/whatever, and your harness. Also, it’s not much fun in the cold.
I would go into town only once a week just like Grandpa did. Actually I go into town once a week now anyway. It does get cold here, but a lot of neighbors have horses and they seem to do fine.
That is something they haven't thought about. Horses are definitely not "emission-free"!
***Small problem: You can’t park a horse in the machine shed for the winter, after filling it with anti-freeze & draining the fuel tank.
You have to feed, water, and shovel every day, whether you’re using it or not.***
There FRENCH! After riding it they kill and eat it!
Horses probably exhale more CO2 then a car.
This is great. They can ride the horses to work (assuming that they’re not on strike) and then eat them for lunch.
There are a few of us who know something about the economics of a horse culture, and its drawbacks. Those who have pipedreams aboout a green world need to think of New York’s situation in 1907, when the automobile was touted as a solution to the problem of waste etc. Alot of houses in New Jersey and Long Island, and all over the country will have to disappear to provide foder for these animals. But blacksmths and carriagemakers etc. will be back in business.
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