What a surprise.....It is even worse than they let on.
The gas figures dont make any sense at all, I am paying THOUSANDS more for my fuel.
Were all screwed with no vaseline.

Hey RTMAN, ever considered buying a four banger? I drive at least a couple hundred miles a week going back and forth to college in my little Chevy Cobalt and never spend more than $30 a week on gas. I did the math and unless prices go up toward $5 a gallon I definitely won't be spending thousands plural on gas. I suppose some people have big families or specialized jobs and need big vehicles a lot of the time, and there are those that drive a lot of job related miles, but I still can't understand why I keep seeing single drivers commuting alone in big SUVs and trucks. Don't people get it already, if you don't need something that big drive something smaller, mabey get a used Saturn S or something to commute and use your big vehicle only when you need to haul a lot of stuff or people. Mabey people could get the versatility they need out of a new Caliber or HHR and still get decent economy (not to mention help the economy by creating more jobs here than foreign cars do). My mom has loaded up her old Escort wagon up with hundreds of pounds of bricks and tiles on different occasions and it does just fine. If you buy a giant truck for hauling stuff and you use it mainly for that then that's fine, but most people could definitely get by with a lot less vehicle.

Wait I just remembered the HHR is currently made in Mexico (stupid NAFTA), but I think the next version will be union made right here in the US. At any rate there are other options than giant vehicles that make you feel cool and look stupid, and if you want you can always piss on the unions that made the middle class and buy foreign.

Dear Michael Z,

Do you happen to know fur-sure that "RTMAN" might not be an independent trucker? If he is, it would make all your suggestions look a little silly, especially your "Mom"'s Escort wagon. Sheez. Maybe we can all park our cars and hunker-down in our Bat caves like survivalists too, huh? I agree with your emphasis on conservation, but it's only a very small part of the puzzle. The value of the dollar is another part. Bio-Diesel-Hybrids would be nice ... but, the Corporatocracy in America isn't about to let that happen. The answer is to revolt. Take to the streets in mass, march on Washington, and throw the bums out ... every damn one of 'em, and start from scratch. That's the answer.

Yes RTMAN could be a trucker, but the article was about impacts on average families so how much a trucker pays would be a little irrelevant wouldn't it? I also think I put a lot of qualifiers in there that kind of implied that there are those, possibly like RTMAN, with specialty hauling vehicles and that's unavoidable. As for the little wagon I think that that sort of vehicle will suffice for MOST people who need to haul stuff around and allow then to commute with out wasting as much gas as a SUV. Oh and FYI, both diesel and hybrid technology add thousands of dollars to the cost of a car making it a little impractical to combine both technologies and expect a lot of buyers. I do wonder why there isn't more biodiesel around though, especially in southern states like here in Fl where the cold is less likely to cause the fuel to gelatinize.

I agree with you Michael Z. There are a lot of people who buy those big 3/4 or 1 ton trucks & never haul anything; but those big 4 wheel-drives, and never go off road (or drive in the snow). It's all about status; the bigger the better.

My little Mitsubishi truck has been a real work horse for me and still give me about 26 MPG after 170K miles.

I am an interior designer and thus traffic in pricey items. It's fairly unavoidable. I suspect the reason that luxury items haven't gone up as much is that their manufacturers know they aren't necessary and thus have to keep them attractive in a faltering economy. Sadly, knowing we need food, pharmaceuticals and transportation, that's where the sellers shaft us. However, it makes sense that if gas goes up, hauling food from farm to market is more expensive, too. This all goes back to petroleum and the war and our relationship with the middle east AND our governments shoddy leadership in getting us out of the 'oil age'. We've evolved through many different eras of technology and abandoned certain forms of fuel along the way. We need to see our government held accountable to guiding us into a new age, where we use other forms of power that are more economical [so regulating cost to some degree] and less harmful to the environment [yes, more regulation]. The economy might blip but it would recover. New investors and new geniuses would rise to the top, creating huge plantations in the barren deserts to soak up and store solar energy. People could get a little pocket change for bringing back their 'empties' like they used to do for Pepsi bottles. Come on, it isn't as Utopian as skeptics like to make it sound; it could work and should be done for our survival.

I advocated solar power here because of the arguments I've heard about the detriment that ethanol has in terms of stealing land used for food production. I think solar power gets treated in the main stream like something that was a cute idea in the 70's that reached it's peak with kooky little cars now on display at Planetariums and panel roofed ranchers with shag carpet and orange Formica a la Brady Bunch. I would love to see it developed more fully - it is the most practical, available and long-lasting form of fuel we have. Why not?

PV technology can meet electricity demand on any scale. The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada could supply the United States with all its electricity (about 800 gigawatts) using modestly efficient (10%) commercial PV modules.

A more realistic scenario involves distributing these same PV systems throughout the 50 states. Currently available sites—such as vacant land, parking lots, and rooftops—could be used. The land requirement to produce 800 gigawatts would average out to be about 17 x 17 miles per state. Alternatively, PV systems built in the "brownfields"—the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation's cities—could supply 90% of America's current electricity.

These hypothetical cases emphasize that PV is not "area-impaired" in delivering electricity. The critical point is that PV does not have to compete with baseload power. Its strength is in providing electricity when and where energy is most limited and most expensive. It does not simply replace some fraction of generation. Rather, it displaces the right portion of the load, shaving peak demand during periods when energy is most constrained and expensive.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/myths.html

PV technology can meet electricity demand on any scale. The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada could supply the United States with all its electricity (about 800 gigawatts) using modestly efficient (10%) commercial PV modules.

A more realistic scenario involves distributing these same PV systems throughout the 50 states. Currently available sites—such as vacant land, parking lots, and rooftops—could be used. The land requirement to produce 800 gigawatts would average out to be about 17 x 17 miles per state. Alternatively, PV systems built in the "brownfields"—the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation's cities—could supply 90% of America's current electricity.

These hypothetical cases emphasize that PV is not "area-impaired" in delivering electricity. The critical point is that PV does not have to compete with baseload power. Its strength is in providing electricity when and where energy is most limited and most expensive. It does not simply replace some fraction of generation. Rather, it displaces the right portion of the load, shaving peak demand during periods when energy is most constrained and expensive.

You're a well informed man, capt Hussein. I just don't get why we can't get there. I know that capitalism and greed from current energy providers plays a role, but why couldn't they be the ones to be willing to buy the 'brownfields' and put in the technology, to basically own it and still charge for it? It's not like capitalism [which I think fits human dynamism and ego like an all too perfect glove] has to take a hit; the utility barons would just have to change the way they make their money, not how much they make. Anyway, I'm just amazed that something this good has to wait in line so long.

Michael Z – “Piss on the unions”? They do a good job at that. I have seen union employees sleeping on the job at a Ford alternator plant. And he was at the control board for an automated line to wind the alternators.
They get what they deserve. Sorry, but $30/hour plus bennies for high school drop outs that essentially put tab-A into slot-B is not sustainable. It is an international market and they need to catch up rather than roll back.

As for solar info, check out the recent Scientific American. They put together a plan to go to a centralized PV system.
IMHO, I think that decentralizing and taking control is the best solution. These are good as for what it takes to install a suitable home system:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bgoodsel/solar/blog.htm

http://wisconsin.sierraclub.org/coulee/pdf/HP105_12_SolarVisionArticle!.pdf

Z – “Piss on the unions”? They do a good job at that. I have seen union employees sleeping on the job at a Ford alternator plant. And he was at the control board for an automated line to wind the alternators.
They get what they deserve. Sorry, but $30/hour plus bennies for high school drop outs that essentially put tab-A into slot-B is not sustainable. It is an international market and they need to catch up rather than roll back.

As for solar info, check out the recent Scientific American. They put together a plan to go to a centralized PV system.
IMHO, I think that decentralizing and taking control is the best solution.

URGH!!! I tried to post links on home PV systems and MoJo blocks the post.
One I have linked to my name.
For another, go to Sierra Club Wisconsin and search for Solar Vision Article. It is a good PDF on a home solar system.

kirkbrew,

I'm looking into getting your comment up.

JS

Too bad we didn't throw the bums out earlier.
No offense fellas, but replacing your gas guzzler with a hybrid ain't gonna save us.

If we refuse to let another Iraq happen, if we refuse to let another G. W. Bush happen, well, then we might be getting somewhere.

Maybe the next time an environmentalist gets elected as president of the US by half a million votes, we should stand up and say that well, sorry the electoral college is an elitist anachronism and the supreme court justices are actually partisan hacks, and if it ain't democratic, sorry it's gotta go.

If we had done that, we would have avoided this shit storm in Iraq, and guess what?

"Projected total US spending on the Iraq war could cover all of the global investments in renewable power generation that are needed between now and 2030 in order to halt current warming trends."

(via priceofoil.com)

Ummm, $378 more for gas and $253 more for food...explains the $600 bucks they are throwing at everyone, oughta placate the masses until the Dems inherit the mess.

Hey kirkbrew just so you know not only do Japanese cars create 40 to 100% fewer jobs in the US (depending on if they are made here or there), but the ones who make a full line of vehicles are actually less productive than General Motors (Toyota included, see here http://www.autolinedetroit.tv/show/1143/1?play about productivity). You have to factor in there that the money they make goes into our economy and has a multiplier effect in creating wealth here in this country. In fact the money generated from those kind of jobs is why Japan and S. Korea both tariff imported cars to the point where only Mercedes and other status brands can sell foreign cars there and 94 to 95% of the rest of the car market in both countries is domestic. Does that sound like fair trade to you, you buy our stuff and we'll tariff yours so you can't sell here? I do agree with capt in concept, however the cost and the need to scale up production are still major limiting factors for solar and most other forms of alternative energy. I've heard that the wind in the Dakotas could also produce enough energy to power the whole country, but in both cases we need more production here and lower costs.

Thanks, kirkbrew, for the info. I think that between the wistfulness of my post and the information contained in yours, capt-Hussein's and MichaelZ's, we have a lot of the right kind of thinking. However, I think that no politician or group of politicians can make this happen. Cynical as it sounds, a few billionaires will have to be convinced that they are destined to be the ones to break in the new technology generation, the 49ers of alternative energy in a sense, so that they can bring their lobbyist power to bear on the politicians, thus paving their own way through tax incentives and changes in regulation to make their business concern the ultimately easier route to money-making than the old standbys of coal and petrol. Now if this were an episode of the Avengers, we'd summon the ten richest men in America or the world into our secret chamber and hypnotize them to our will - but hopefully in this episode, Mrs. Peel and Stead would see how right we were and not intervene. Oh, if only life were as easy as TV...

"I think that no politician or group of politicians can make this happen"

*****

No but theye can try and others will quash the effort:

From MoJo: 2003 Prodigal Sun

[...]

The budget for the solar institute -- which President Jimmy Carter had created to spearhead solar innovation -- was slashed from $124 million in 1980 to $59 million in 1982. Scientists who had left tenured university jobs to work under Hayes were given two weeks notice and no severance pay. The squelching of the institute -- later partly re-funded and renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory -- marked the start of Reagan's campaign against solar power. By the end of 1985, when Congress and the administration allowed tax credits for solar homes to lapse, the dream of a solar era had faded. The solar water heater President Carter had installed on the White House roof in 1979 was dismantled and junked. Solar water heating went from a billion-dollar industry to peanuts overnight; thousands of sun-minded businesses went bankrupt. "It died. It's dead," says Peter Barnes, whose San Francisco solar- installation business had 35 employees at its peak. "First the money dried up, then the spirit dried up," says Jim Benson, another solar activist of the day.

*****

MoJo should at minimum allow linking back to MoJo?

Thanks for the info. I was six when Reagen took office and raised by a father who voted across party lines and a mother who is still a staunch Republican. I am fully aware of what a shithead Reagen was and how bad for Progressives the Reagen years were, but this is yet another aspect that I didn't know.