Bigger Will Never Be Eco Friendly
I nearly got into an accident the other day. I wanted to go forward and two cars - one in front of me and one beside me - were trying to turn and go around me. We were pretty close to each other; close enough for me to see that the other cars were gasoline-electric hybrids. I drive a hybrid too. There I was, part of a 21st century traffic jam.
My car is a Honda Civic while the others were a Toyota Prius and a Nissan Altima. All of us probably get about 45 mpg. But hybrids aren’t just about fuel efficiency. A compact car with a regular gasoline engine likely gets close to the same mileage. But the gas-only engine emits far more greenhouse gases than a hybrid does. So for us wacky environmentalists, it’s not just about fuel efficiency, it’s also about reducing our carbon footprint.
Now I’ve got a friend who is one of the incredibly smart General Motors techno-geeks that designs and builds hybrid cars. I can’t even tell you my friend’s gender because like everybody else in this country right now, after three months of precipitous nationwide job losses, this person can’t afford to lose his or her job. So let’s call my friend Q, like the scientist in the Bond movies.
Q told me about a big celebration General Motors had last week because the Chairman’s Award had been bestowed on the hybrid Chevrolet Tahoe-GMC Yukon sport utility vehicle.
Q calls it a sport brutality vehicle which always makes us enviro-nerds laugh.
See, we see a certain irony in building giant cars that will lull us into thinking we’re making a difference, so we can keep driving bigger cars more places and never actually address our energy consumptive lifestyles. We compact hybrid users even scold ourselves for this, although we’re at least willing to sacrifice roominess for the sake of the planet.
Anyway, Q said that the featured speaker at this fancy self-aggrandizing event, Terry J. Woychowski, General Motors’ executive director of global vehicle chief engineers and North American chief engineers, told everybody that “a generation from now, there will be a billion vehicles on the road.”
I know these people make cars for a living, but a billion vehicles. Doesn’t that sound like we’re going in the wrong direction?
Terry went on to say that “the plan is to anticipate the end of petroleum, be stingy with fuel in the short term and plan on using hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in the long run.”
Because this party was patting themselves on the back about a car that already existed, Terry didn’t mention how that switch to hydrogen might happen. No, instead Terry discussed this giant hybrid that they recognized for “being stingy” on gas: a vehicle that, according to the Chevrolet Web site, gets a whopping 21 mpg.
Want to buy one? Got $50,490? That’s $15,000 more than its counterpart with a conventional power train.
Now, the United States Environmental Protection Agency estimates that this hybrid option will save the typical driver $728 per year. If we apply the federal tax breaks allowed for the purchase of this hybrid, it’ll take about 14 years to make up the difference.
But remember the traffic jam? It’s not just about fuel efficiency, it’s also about carbon footprints.
Terry wound up his speech with a few comments congratulating the engineers on developing such a fantastic vehicle and compared its cross-country environmental effects to someone mowing their lawn, or some such mumbo-jumbo. By this point Q had realized that there was cake and got completely distracted.
But as soon as Q finished licking green frosting from the disposable plate, Q started calculating the carbon dioxide produced while maneuvering this monstrosity across the U.S. Turns out, Q says, “Driving this brute from Boston to San Diego will create 1,400,000 grams of CO-two - almost equal to the weight of the vehicle itself.”
And we never discussed how much energy it took to build the darn thing in the first place.
We need a realistic strategy. Even if it’s a hybrid traffic jam - we’re still in a jam.
Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth, Maine is the author of “Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.”
© 2008 The Bangor Daily News
If we would return to the sane forms of urban design and public transit we had early in the last century, 90% of us would get all out daily commuting and errands done without needing a car at all.
And the quality of life and health improvements of a city whose public spaces are designed for people not cars, would be immesurable. Think of the parks or community garden where parking garages now stand.
And none of this requires any new technology.
Carbon…is our ‘friend’.
We once burned a lot of wood…releasing scant-H2 as H2O, and therefore ‘lots of CO2. Then Coal came along…less carbon-per-hydrogen, less CO2 per btu. Then Oil, with even more-favorable carbon-vs.-hydrogen.
Someday, we’ll create a lot of pure H2 from all our salinated-H2O, and just burn that (and/or have clean Fusion-power for electricity).
In meantime, there is LOTS of oil to make into ‘flammables’ — the most efficient of them, for cars/light-trucks, being Propane (which requires little by way of converting current-Fleets). JDRockefeller pushed us towards dirty ‘gasoline’ — in order to create the ‘crisis’ of warming/pollution we so-fear today. Far cheaper/cleaner to burn Propane in our gasoline-engines (and waste/surplus/veggie-biodiesels in our diesels, instead of awful/silly/dirty petrol-diesel). But — Exxon, the Seven-Sisters, our Governments, and others with Interests in gasoline/petrol-diesel/’Warming’ won’t LET us do THAT.
Instead, they will fool you with Myths of Peak-Oil (when they meant ‘peak-refinement’), Scarcity (when hundreds-of-years worth of Oil abounds, and could EASILY be turned into relatively-clean Propane in efficient/new refineries, instead of stupid ‘gasoline’ — like now).
Propane has no ‘real’ greenhouse-gas emissions (like the nitrates/sulfurs/methane of inefficient-gasoline) — just the nice CO2 that plants/trees breathe. And, in Truth, more CO2 in the atmosphere will Cool the Planet (not ‘warming’ it, at all!).
But, “money has to be made”, “controls have to be exerted”, and “people sure are Dumb”…aren’t they?
When I saw that one of these Hybrid SUV’s had won some Green Car of the Year award, “Green” became a dirty word to me. Oddly, the word “conservative” would be a good candidate to replace it. Small, simple, stingy, well maintained, seldom used. Of course, no one is going to invest any money into anything that will encourage people to spend less.
As though it’s an absolute must that the raw tonnage of vehicles sold each year must increase every single year, or else the terrorists win.
Can’t we waste all that money on something less harmful? Drive a Yaris and hang out at Casinos instead.
Like this article; we should have many, many more similar in our public spaces.
Love to go to Europe or Central America - places where cars are not necessary and where I always lose weight and feel better because I can walk with a sense of purpose.
Every neighborhood needs a school, a meeting place, a grocery, a post office, etc. But the exciting, the exotic, the far-away will always have a place in the adventurous, particularly young, human heart. The Mormans (I am defintely NOT one of them) have hit the nail on the head with their missions. Young people, finishing high school, long to get out of the house and test themselves in the wider world. It is a part of establishing one’s own identity, gaining self-suffiency, and putting together the pieces of the puzzle that are the world. The Mormans offer the mission, mainstream society: well, I guess we still have a peace corps, but for most, it is the military. I’m rambling. The point is: yes, we do need localism, but not provincialism. Instead of giving our young people the opportunity to build relationships, to understand the world, we turn them into fighters for capitalism, and tell them they are “serving” their country.
When politicians talk about “our interests,” they usually have nothing to do with the public good, but a whole lot to do with corporate profits. Bigger will never be better; it’s time to really think small.
And, knowing the competitive American spirit, once that hits the groove, we’ll be competing to see if can live the smallest.
And our young people, the can serve the interests of mankind by getting out, learning about the world, and coming home to share it when it’s time to settle down.
More concrete jungles are not the answer to global warming. People need green space to keep their connection with nature and balance in their lives. There are acceptable creative alternatives that balance the need for efficient living with green space.
Even in the suburbs there are choices that have not been made. The example of two teachers traveling long distances to teach. Would it not make sense for those persons to switch jobs and teach closer to home. School administrations have not been actively pursuing this alternative. There are many additional expamples.
Americans generally are not civilized enough to limit and restrict their driving habits without the imposition of high gas prices to do it for them. No doubt that media can play a crucial role in educating people to voluntarily restrict their driving thereby bringing down gas prices.
The forces of resistance to change are so strong that if one is to take on an issue, organize and pursue it, ten years of their lives can be easily spent in the process. More practical methods of change must be invented to coax more citizens into the change process because currently the cost to most is just too great. They have been drained of the resources (money) to justify participation. They are limited to changing themselves.
I choose not to participate in the criticism of GM execs and their twisted and self serving actions. I choose instead to focus on the positive aspects of participating in, and the growing of, the new Green vision and lifeways. GM needs no help from me to help it collapse, it is doing a fine job on its own. Short term thinking is a disaster strategy.
This article fails to mention the pollution associated with the battery manufacture and disposal:-
http://www.brookesnews.com/072105primus.html
Doom and Gloom: Today the news reported that GM is cutting 160-200 jobs in one of its plants that makes SUVs.
Get a bike and relearn to ride or-or use your walking feet to do local errands. The library, post office, grocery stores, doctor’s office, and my kids’ schools are all within walking/biking distance of our home, along with 3 parks and a community swimming pool. We don’t have public transportation in our city, but use “people” power whenever possible.
Drive your cars less, no matter if they are hybrids or not. It takes energy and resources to make those vehicles and keep them running.
mealsoto-so who’s controlling the vast majority of scientists who say the co2 will warm the earth?
I would think any effort would be applauded, but then I remembered, reason doesn’t usually exist on the left. The fact is, if people want to buy a hybrid SUV, and can afford them, they will - at least the thing isnt consuming AS much energy.
My advice - buy a motorcycle.
The other problem with SUVs is that they are just terrifyingly ugly.
If we have to have cars, they ought to be beautiful, if only because they are so terribly intrusive, certainly the most destructive of all this modern stuff.
No one ever became more intelligent, enlightened, or more compassionate as a result of driving a car.
So walk more. Cities should be developed around that very simple human ability.
Beyond the impact of your car on the environment, your car impacts your savings and retirement as well, if you can live a car free life the savings are huge.
If you take the money you spend on a car (hybrid or not), and invest it instead, after 20 years you would have an additional $450,000 in savings.
If you want to continue owning and driving a car in retirement, you will have to save an additional $180,000 towards retirement, just for the pleasure of destroying the planet.
http://www.iplanretirement.com/retirementblog/car-free-life/
Being Green Saves You Green.
I live in San Francisco and do not own a car. If you live in a big city - you shouldn’t, and don’t need to, own a car.
Ramsay
Adam Smith distinguished himself in 1776 with his book Wealth of Nations from his French physiocrat predecessors by inferring that the source of value was not land, but labor. What he could not have known was that 75 years later, Lord Kelvin would propogate the laws of thermodynamics. The second law prohibits the concept of outputting more labor than input. In economics this means that it would be impossible to obtain more value in output than was input. It costs more to grow a tree than to cut one down. It costs more to raise a human being than to kill one.
Profits inevitably mean victims and so long as victims were merely animals or other kinds of people, Western civilization had no problem in draining every last bit of value from them. As we pack the globe, however, saturating it with our valuable products, or by-products have begun to reach our own environments. Our solution, by all accounts, appears to be more of the same poison that killed us, stifling the scope of government to allow the market an even more free hand to desecrate the planet.
If we do not bring down the market, we may find ourselves facing an implacable ferocity at the hand of nature.
My Lexus Epiphany
Good better bestus got me in the rhinal cortex
while I drove my Lexus to the state of Texas
I paused…hey could this be that perfect moment..
time seemed to stop as I plied the pavement
silence and awe filled me…
when a gentle rumble by my solar plexus
stirred me in my posh yet humble Lexus
hey is this that perfect moment …. an epiphany of sorts?
Ah but of course
We should plow this freeway back into something useful
like acreage for squash or spuds or huff free hemp
It’s pretty unlikely that vehicles called “sport” anything are ever going to be the best choices for fuel efficiency or environmentalism. The super-sport muscle cars of old were not, and, guess what, sport utility things are not either.
Perhaps we can conclude that people who needed to combine a “sport” image with transportation mostly have had their mental priorities in some other place. Perhaps we can also conclude that automakers LOVED them (for buying something more expensive–with more options too) and will market to them first and foremost for the rest of our lives–no matter what.
End income tax on incomes of less than $100,000. Make up the difference with big tax increases on energy. That will get people’s attention. Nothing else will work nearly as well. Maybe even give medicare to all and pay for it with energy taxes. Now that would definitely make one hell of a difference on our nation’s energy deficiency and on global warming.
What better proof of GM’s motives exist than their electric car “rental” program that they subsequently terminated and GM proceeded to destroy all of the perfectly sound electric vehicles ?
“More concrete jungles are not the answer to global warming.”
Doom and gloom - please do some travelling and reconsider your dismissive prejudice against cities. All cities, or neighborhoods in the cites, don’t look like or have to look like the popular stereotypes of Los Angeles or Detroit.
Quiet, walkable, transit-served cities with parks plazas, and sidealks that support family-owned businesses art and culture, are, most decidedly not “concrete jungles”. Is Floreence or Venice a “concrete jungle”? Amsterdam? Numerous US city neighborhoods?
And such places are superior developmental environments for children and young adults - how many of the worlds greatest thinkers - living or historical - grew up isolated in rural areas?
Yet, all these places could be considerably improved if cars were removed from them altogether.
BTW “concrete jungle” has racist connotations, either that, or it connotes freeway ramps and parking garages - which are exactly the elements that are NOT part of sane, car free urban design.
I have no trouble finding trees and green space in every city I’ve ever lived in - and and there would be lots more room for trees if we got rid of the cars. A neighborhood of 3 to 4 story houses or apartments built to a floor area ratio of 1.5 easily supports walking for all normal errands, while still leaving more than 60% open space - IF that space isn’t used for cars.
The sprawling suburban model is utterly untenable if we are to deeply cut GHG emissions. It is also untenable for community-scale economics. Unless one is farming or pursuing another occupation that requires a home outside of a town or city, everyone should be living in a community where walking is possible to basic errands, and transit for commuting or special errands or entertainment.
And the idea that moving out to the rolling countryside is a solution to ANY envirinmental probelms is not only 180 degrees wrong, but it is also elitist.
More info here:
http://www.carfree.com/
My advice - buy a motorcycle.
Better yet, electric motor scooter.
I’m not trying to be dense but if 2 cars burn a gallon of gasoline to go 45 miles, how is it that one emits less CO2 than the other?
Pat, you just push your gambling re$ort thing and let people who actually think Green do the talking.
Hybrids are not Green. You have to give up more.
have a look into what has been done in Bogota, Columbia:
car-free sundays and holidays
Bus Rapid Transit on bus-only roads
major roadways closed and turned into walk/ bike corridors
http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/bogota
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070622.whappyurbanmain0623/BNStory/lifeMain/home
I’m with you USAn.
How’s this for a picture of the Early 21st Century United Statesian:
An hour of driving time in a gas/electric Hybrid automobile to an exurban trailhead. Then, a pleasant mountain bike ride down a right-of-way that used to be a rail line connecting a major urban center with a more minor one. And finally another hour dive in a second Hybrid auto, back to the trailhead to retrieve the first, and then the return home in two autos.
All the while the participants are careful to not litter the trail with their plastic water bottles containing spring water shipped from Fiji, lest their “Greenyness” is violated.
Dinner at a local upscale restaurant -featuring “local” meat that has been trucked 150 miles over a mountain pass and “organic” baby green salad that has spent the last 3 weeks under refrigeration- completes the day, and the two Hybrids are then driven back to a $500,000 single family home and parked for the night.
In the morning, before driving both of the Hybrids another hour to glass-sealed climate-controlled office buildings to work in advertising or software, a cable news program sparks a short, but heated debate over whether Obama or Clinton would make the best new Emporer (president).
The exhalation of steam from the $2,300 espresso machine in the kitchen silences the debate with the promise of finely brewed Fair-trade organic coffee, imported with the express approval of the Narco-Fascist regime of Columbia.
———————————————-
Stereotypes? I’d like to think so to.
But I’m positive I could hit a baker’s dozen of these people with a rock from any intersection in downtown Seattle (and believe me, I’ve been tempted, but I hear the S.P.D. frowns on that sort of act).
My point?
Well to be entertaining of course, but also to attempt to illustrate how “green consumerism” -as currently exemplified by the Hybrid personal automobile and carbon “footprints”- can act as not only a Distraction from the kinds of changes needed in our living systems, but can also be a kind of Corruption, not just hindering but destroying actual change.
So yeah, I agree that small steps are still steps, but I would remind everyone that small steps IN THE WRONG DIRECTION will get us lost just as surely as big giant leaping ones will.
It’ll just take longer, that’s all.
Anyway, remember the slogan of the Mille Lacs Band Ojibwe Indian Casino:
Have Fun!
-matti.
That goes twice for corporations.
Decentralize government with the referendum.
A fellow near me has just started a business selling artesian water. He has a huge contract to ship this water 300 miles to the edge of the giant Ogallala (sp?) aquifer. Trees are cut in Appalachia and sent to China, where it’s made into furniture and then shipped back to us. Fuel is way too cheap when these kinds of idiocies make financial sense.
It ought to be obvious that now is the time to overturn the ban on growing and cultivating hemp. 26000 industrial uses of hemp is what the oil and military scumbags don’t want you to know. If you don’t want another environmental tragedy, you’ll work hard to fight for solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and better biofuels such as hemp, switchgrass, algae, etc … which require no petroleum whatsoever unlike corn and sugar.
NOW WHO’S READY TO BE A BRAVEHEART WINNER?
Here we sit on our big fat _sses
spewing volumes of hot gasses.
Pecking happily on the computer keys
instead of gettin off our butts and planting trees.
“Bigger will never be eco-friendly” goes double for fat butts…
I live in Chicago. I have never owned anything with an engine, and the only times I have asked friends to drive me somewhere is when what I really wanted was for them to haul some large new purchase home for me.
Unfortunately, dealing with other people isn’t always easy: I once went to a family wedding “out in the sticks” using public transportation. I was a bit late, so ran the distance from the bus stop to the reception hall. When I arrived, I was treated like some kind of lunatic. An older cousin told another to take me to the bathroom and make sure that I put cold water on my face and combed my hair before our aunts and uncles saw me. Imagine, sweating a very little and getting your hair blown about in the wind constitutes unacceptable behavior that needs to be hidden! (I’d hate to think what kind of reaction I’d have received, had I been a woman.)
One problem we have to get over is the attitude that one shouldn’t have to walk more than two blocks to get somewhere. One of those same uncles I was to ‘clean up’ before greeting once insisted upon driving me to the store - a distance of roughly 3 blocks (3/8 mile) - to get a few items. I was young and healthy, and walked farther than that to get to the train I took to work or college classes. (The truly strange part: he thought nothing of walking the length of a golf course and back on a Saturday.)
Too many people use cars even when there is nothing like justification for doing so.
On the other hand, my veterinarian bikes to the office. My chiropractor bikes to the train. Not just better for the environment, but better for one’s health.
How would one persuade people like my relatives?
It is important to note that a car for many people is:
1. A very important fashion accessory.
2. A quiet place to make phone calls or read the paper.
3. A comfortable place to eat in complete privacy.
4. A very handy device for stops at various commercial establishments with curb service and openable windows through which their personnel can transact business.
5. A huge wheeled device with a very small mirror whose primary purpose is verification of makeup application or checking facial appearance.
6. An excellent way to avoid interaction with the environment.
7. A rolling monument to the driver’s income, tax bracket, aesthetic sensibilities, or psychological sophistication.
Therefore, why not buy a very large one and make a big fat statement?
acott- Our family is referred to by our extended families as being “that way”. As in , “Well, you’l have to excuse them for bringing their own table settings to the picnic, they’re ‘that way’”. I have no helpful tips, just keep doing what you’re doing and it’ll become less “weird” to everyone else.
Though, being a “girlie” girl myself, I would definitely want to “clean up” after a short run-especially to a wedding reception.
Get a bike.
Use it. For real stuff. Quit your spa membership.
“A compact car with a regular gasoline engine likely gets close to the same mileage. But the gas-only engine emits far more greenhouse gases”
Jesus - the scientific illiteracy is appalling. If you are burning X amount of gasoline, then you are releasing kX amount of CO2. It’s that simple. There’s no magic in a hybrid vehicle that makes that gas you burn somehow not emit CO2.
“A compact car with a regular gasoline engine likely gets close to the same mileage. But the gas-only engine emits far more greenhouse gases than a hybrid does.”
Whoa! I had no idea hybrids could defy the physical laws of the universe!
surya - You must be new? Lots of scientific laws and principles get defied here on a regular basis.
ClassAct -
Adam Smith may well have believed in the labour theory of value - that doesn’t make it true. Some of his ideas have been rejected (just like psychiatry has abandoned large parts of Freud). I never said land was the source of value, because it isn’t.
Furthermore, goods are the product of the labour of many different people - not just the primary producer (if such a person exists anymore):
the business owner who organises labour
the many workers who transform raw materials into a final product
the truck drivers who get the product to market
the shop assistants who stock the product
the workers who scan the items on the till
There is no way to determine what percentage of the final product price is due to each person. How do you quantify shelf-stacking in the price of a product?
Indeed, there is no such thing as ‘value’ as this is a relative concept. Price (rather than value) is determined by the interaction between supply and demand factors, this includes land prices, labour prices (wages), commodity prices and final product prices. If there is an increase in demand (and no corresponding rise in supply) for any of these things, their price rises. It really is very simple.
hemp4victory-
In addition, hemp is a very healthy oil (tasty on salads but don’t heat it up), it is also easy to grow without many pesticides and makes great clothes.
http://rebelconservative.blogspot.com
Mr. Obvious- good one.
Recycle 1
Sould you return: Sorry for the delay.
Well, I had intended to comb my hair, but to be furtively hurried off to the men’s room so that no one would learn of my “unacceptable” behavior in taking public transporation and then covering perhaps a quarter mile on foot was more than a little extreme.
Women are at more than a little disadvantage: their shoes, their dresses (especially formal ones), and differences in hairstyles would make it more awkward.
As I said, I’d hate to think what their response would have been, had I been a woman. You got me wondering how I would have handled that quarter of a mile, had I been a woman. I seriously doubt I would have jogged, freshly coiffed and in high heels. Frankly, I can’t imagine being able to *walk* in high heels. (As Jack Lemmon’s character in “Some Like It Hot” observed when he had trouble walking in them: “It’s a whole other sex!”) And, as for dresses, well I once wore a kilt to a Scottish formal affair - (*not* a family party, to be sure!) - and that was closer to the female experience of wearing dresses than was comfortable. I don’t know how women manage it all!
I think it’s amazing that telecommuting/teleworking aka “working from home” isn’t named here. There are so many jobs consisting of sitting in front of a computer at an office. This can be done just as well at a desk at home.
It’s one of the best things you can do for the environment. You may not even need to own a car. You can share a car for occasional trips and vacations.
See http://del.icio.us/meryn/teleworking for resources.