A safe environment is bad for economy?

[unknowngiver]

Hey guys
Recently I came to know that an environmentally friendly water powered car was invented in the 1900's and the inventor was murdered. The reason: most of the environmentally friendly solutions are bad for "economy". If we stop using gas and fossil fuels and use stuff like Water, or wind or solar power as the main resource of electricity the big guys (gas/oil companies) will die! and a lot of jobs will be lost.
so what is your take on this? Do you think that a safe environment is bad for economy? Do you think that the big dogs will let stuff like Water powered cars come into production?
Thanks

P.s: search water powered car in google to find articles and videos on it. It is REAL!

[Cattraknoff]

No they won't. They need to retain their absolute control over the populace.

[Mitch]

This is definitely NOT bad for the economy, it's just that the people in the oil industry would be out of business, but this will also create new opportunities and new business.
It is completely within our realm of technologies to create alternative energy sources, it has been done, but they need to be subsidized and supported to get off the ground. The problem is, multinational corporations (ie. oil companies) have the power, they don't want it, so it won't happen.

[Locke]

Well, a water powered car is in fact a terrible idea. I don't see wasting water just to power someone's Hummer, water being a limited resource. A better example of this corporate techological obfuscation is the electric car. A documentary, titled "What happened to the electric car?" was created at some point in this decade.

[unknowngiver]

well 70% of earth is water! so i dont think we have water shortages. I've seen that documentry too..but again the question is how to produce all the electricity!
I found an article on wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation
Again generating electricity from the traditional methods, we are polluting the earth. The few environmentally safe alternatives we have are not enough to provide enough electricity to fill our needs today. Turbines and solar panels for example are great alternatives but its hard to rely on them.

[Mitch]

Locke, I think you've mistaken simply 'water' for 'potable water'. There is definitely a shortage of 'potable water', but not of 'water', but that is beside the point.
unknowngiver, yes, we can't rely on simply turbines and solar panels, but there are many other potential energy sources out there, we just need the government's help and people willing to find the answers. I would be willing if I could!