Greening freight trucks

We know that freight transportation is now a major source of GHG emissions; we are pretty sure that freight transportation is likely to produce an increasing amount of GHG emissions in the foreseeable future. We know that a hefty menu of methods to reduce freight transportation produced GHG emissions have been proposed, many of which are being used or tested at this time. We can think of these proposals as incremental or structural - some are patches on existing systems while others would constitute major changes in transportation technology. "What we might do?" is well covered in the literature on greening freight transportation. The same is not the case with "How to do it?" This essay suggests a broader vision - looking much more intensively at the context of the proposed mitigation methods (at what economists call "externalities") and, second, at the formation of strategies that will take such ideas through the political process. We suggest that it is easier to describe methods than to ways to actually embody these methods in real life policies or programs.