What Must Be Done, or 3 Ideas for Tomorrow

1. End the West's dependence on oil. How? Hydrogen. And no I'm not just talking about fuel cells that have been 'just around the corner' for five years now. I'm talking about a simple modification that can be done on a gasoline engine that can make it burn hydrogen. Apparently the only waste is a small amount of steam. Where can we get the hydrogen? Well, there's a process that takes raw sewage and turns it into 3 useful products: hydrogen, solid carbon and heat. Use the hydrogen for fuel, make products out of the carbon, like lightweight but superstrong alternatives to steel, and use the heat to make steam that'll turn turbines that'll produce electricity. We've got an infinite supply of sewage coming out of our cities and farms every day. It's time we put it to work.
2. End suburban sprawl. For the past 50 years we've been operating under the myth that cities are a problem to be escaped. Well here's a thought: CITIES AREN'T THE PROBLEM, THEY'RE THE SOLUTION. The Western World's headlong flight into the myth of suburban tranquility has created a society that is literally chained to automobiles, growing fatter by the day, and is disconnected from its fellow human beings. We need to rethink urban planning to break away from the automobile, and embrace things like convenient and efficient public transit, and walking. Here's a simple test, if you can't walk to you neighborhood grocery store in under 20 minutes, then you are living in a poorly designed community. Eliminate freeways and expressways and replaced them with properly planned communities with accessible public transit. I'm not saying that we should eliminate the automobile. I'm just saying that we should rethink our relationship with it. It was created to serve us, not the other way around.
3. Look for new a new industrial base. Find uses for the base carbon left by the sewage/hydrogen process. Then look for other alternative materials that can be cheaply mass produced to take some of the burden off our already endangered forests. I'm talking about industrial hemp and bamboo being grown in former tobacco fields in great quantities and then used for everything from paper to plywood. It can be done, the world just needs someone with the stones and the money to do it. Use these new materials and processes to produce quality industrial jobs, that will in turn create more people capable of buying your new products.