Remember when cars reduced pollution?

No, of course you don’t remember. The pollution was the stink and slime of horse manure, and the year was 1890.

Horses, those hay burning engines of transportation, produce 15 to 30 pounds of manure per day.

Gosh, you need a big baggie to pick up your horse’s droppings when you take it for a walk. But what about a city, like New York, who “employed” a lot of horses for transportation and hauling?

A lot of horses? Well, in 1890 there we about 170,000 horses in use in New York. And they were stabled in the city as well.

Hmmm, 170,000 horses times approximately 22 pounds of manure per day equals about 1,900 TONS of “droppings” per day. Good grief!! That must have made for interesting slush on snowy days.

The good news is that the horseless carriage came to the rescue. No manure, just a little bit of smoke. But like New York’s streets crowded with horses, we now have streets crowded with cars.

The bad news is that they produce “invisible pollution” in our air.

The good news is that we have electric vehicles.

The bad news is that they will produce plenty of dead batteries that require safe disposal.

What’s the lesson?

Every solution produces a new problem. Pay attention to the problems you fix. You may have created a new problem “down the road.”

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