France's Secret Weapon to Beat Global Warming

The horse: Is this the secret weapon to beat global warming?

The French are mounting a transport revolution led by the humble horse, using it in more than 70 towns to pull schoolbuses and to collect refuse
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 25 November 2007

They may previously have appreciated it more for its culinary value, but the French are discovering a new green form of transport: the humble horse.

More than 70 French towns have already gone back to the future by introducing horse-drawn carriages to replace petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles for local tasks such as collecting rubbish, street-cleaning and taking children to school. And at least 30 more are set to join the revolution next year.

The revival of horse-power is being pushed by the French National Stud – that's not David Ginola or even President Nicolas Sarkozy, but an organisation set up four centuries ago by "the Sun King", Louis XIV, to supply horses for his military campaigns.

Last week, it told France's annual conference of mayors that gee-gees were "a serious alternative" to the gas-guzzler as municipalities seek to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. Children in the flower-bedecked tourist town of St-Pierre-sur-Dives, in Normandy's Calvados country, are being ferried to school in picturesque carriages rather than school buses.

http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3194065.ece

don't horses, like cows release methane? How is this greener?

:rofl: too funny

after all, before humans (and during our early years) there were gigantic herds of animals roaming over the earth. We have more cattle now, but less of everything else. :shrug:

They produce greenhouse grass from eating grass, which absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere when it grows.

Can we have some serious solutions please? Something that would work somewhere other than a small french town preferably.

It's not going to take kids to school in most parts of the country. It's not going to be usable as city public transportation.

Honestly, it wouldn't work in Pittsburgh, much less New York City. It's just not a serious solution for urban/suburban transportation issues.

viva the telecommute

(by Jethro Tull)

Iron-clad feather-feet pounding the dust
An October's day, towards evening
Sweat embossed veins standing proud to the plough
Salt on a deep chest seasoning
Last of the line at an honest day's toil
Turning the deep sod under
Flint at the fetlock, chasing the bone
Flies at the nostrils plunder.

The Suffolk, the Clydesdale, the Percheron vie
with the Shire on his feathers floating
Hauling soft timber into the dusk
to bed on a warm straw coating.

Heavy Horses, move the land under me
Behind the plough gliding --- slipping and sliding free
Now you're down to the few
And there's no work to do
The tractor's on its way.

Let me find you a filly for your proud stallion seed
to keep the old line going.
And we'll stand you abreast at the back of the wood
behind the young trees growing
To hide you from eyes that mock at your girth,
and your eighteen hands at the shoulder
And one day when the oil barons have all dripped dry
and the nights are seen to draw colder
They'll beg for your strength, your gentle power
your noble grace and your bearing
And you'll strain once again to the sound of the gulls
in the wake of the deep plough, sharing.

Standing like tanks on the brow of the hill
Up into the cold wind facing
In stiff battle harness, chained to the world
Against the low sun racing
Bring me a wheel of oaken wood
A rein of polished leather
A Heavy Horse and a tumbling sky
Brewing heavy weather.

Bring a song for the evening
Clean brass to flash the dawn
across these acres glistening
like dew on a carpet lawn
In these dark towns folk lie sleeping
as the heavy horses thunder by
to wake the dying city
with the living horseman's cry
At once the old hands quicken ---
bring pick and wisp and curry comb ---
thrill to the sound of all
the heavy horses coming home.

:applause:

I had a sort of vision the other day of modern cities using horses for local transport - with high tech means of cleaning up the poop. A sort of steampunk vision...