Tag: environment

politics

Gasoline is an addiction

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The first gas crisis happened before I was born but cars today are less fuel efficient than they were in the 70’s. I usually try not to curse on my blog but seriously what the fuck?! We as a nation have done a lot of amazing things: put a man on the moon with less computer memory (64k) than is in your current mobile phone, invented the Internet, sequenced the human genome – I can go on and on – but some how a fuel efficient car escapes us. Seriously?
Ten years ago in 1998, I lived in England and gas was the equivalent of $8 a gallon. Some of my classmates had cars and their response wasn’t a huge public outcry. They simply made sure that they bought smaller, more fuel efficient cars! Whoa. A mind shattering idea, right? Since i got back, I have been in the minority in believing that gas should cost more that it does now. I had a car from 1999 – 2000 and felt that way when I was paying $1.20 a gallon even though I was a poor college student. I am not Casandra but the handwriting on this wall was pretty clear to me then and it still is now: the problem we have isn’t with the price of gas. The problem is gas, period.
As Thomas Friedman puts it in his recent op-ed piece, “When a person is addicted to crack cocaine, his problem is not that the price of crack is going up.His problem is what that crack addiction is doing to his whole body. The cure is not cheaper crack, which would only perpetuate the addiction and all the problems it is creating. The cure is to break the addiction.
To that I say “Amen!” I wrote about this topic in 2005 and so did Mr. Friedman but 3 years later we are still in the same stupid place: buying oil from dictators and/or Russia with no better plan in place. What a lovely situation to be in.
Sure, you may say that as a walker, subway and train rider and cab passenger living in Manhattan I never have known what it was like to own and operate a car. Well, I just joined the car class – I have an 09 Matrix that gets 21 city and 29 highway which still isn’t good enough for me but unfortunately, a hybrid is super expensive and leasing one really isn’t an option.
To be honest, I wish I was paying $6 – $8 a gallon for gas as it would be better for the planet that my daughter is inheriting from me one day.

movies

An Inconvient Truth

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An Inconvient Truth opens this coming Friday, 5/26 and I for one cannot wait to see it, even though it may very well be “the most terrifying film you will ever see” as its producers claim. Wired and other media outlets have written alot lately about how Al Gore, freed from politics, is focusing all of his energies on facing the looming environmental disaster the globe is facing (he is the narrator of this documentary). The movie is supposed to be awe-inspiring, damning, scary, eye opening and whole bunch of other adjectives. I have pledged to not only see this movie (the site has a counter which tracks pledges) but to bring 3 others with me. In a sense, environmentalists are treating this the same way that Christians treated “The Passion of the Christ” and I for one think that its a good move as this movie’s message needs to be spread to as many people as possible.
Check out the trailer below and please, for our planet’s sake and for the sake of our children, grand children and all future generations, go and see this film. In 5 years, Kilimanjaro will no longer have an snow and Hemingway’s masterpiece becomes a true anachronism. He might as well called it “Hanging with the Dodo.” Truly Scary shit.

ramblings

Chevy Tahoe: Die Hippies Die!

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Chevy recently ran a promotion with “The Apprentice” where people got to make their “own” Tahoe commercial by piecing together video clips of the Tahoe provided by GM and adding their own copy to that new montage. While there were a lot of the expected anti-SUV pro-environment entries, the one titled “Die Hippies Die” is obviously the very funny exception. Enjoy.
Via John “Mr. DEE-troit” Thornton

ramblings

Go Before They Are Gone

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I do not make a habit of reading USA Today. In fact, I never read it unless I’m on vacation and have no other option. That being said, I could not resist clicking on a banner for USAToday.com that was advertising the top Travel stories of this past week. The story that really called out to me was “Vanishing Treasures: 5 places to see before they are gone”. According to this paper, here are the top 5 cultural treasures that are in danger of going bye-bye:

  1. The snows of Kilimanjaro
  2. Polar bears on Hudson Bay
  3. Ancient Egyptian archaeological sites
  4. Gullah/Geechee culture
  5. Monarch butterflies’ annual migration

I’ll have to check my calendar but odds are I’m not seeing any of these in ’06. Hopefully they will still be around in ’07…

ramblings

How Does Water Expire?

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I have been in all-day Client meetings the past 2 days where access to the good old office water cooler is not possible. So, I have been drinking bottled water. I happened to notice on my .500 mL bottle of Dannon Natural Spring Water that it was bottled on 8/11/05 at 16:59. That was nice to know I guess. I also noticed right under those stats that it will expire in August, 2007. No more specifics were given. So, I thought to myself, how the fuck does water expire?

In case you are wondering, I’ll tell you. Water is known as the universal solvent. What that means is that it will absorb almost anything. So, even though it’s been on earth for millions of years, once you put water in a bottle it’s life is limited. It’s actually better for you to drink tap water than bottle water because fluorescent lights, the kind of lights that illuminate every convenience store in the world, help grow bacteria. During the bottling process, there are various processes used to clean up the water including filtration and ozonation. If too much ozone was added, the plastic will leach into the bottles. If too little ozone was added, bacteria can start growing immediately. Awesome!
Now, take that gross tap water. The tap water that arrives at your house is just hours from where it has continuously been tested for hundreds of contaminants. Even with a bottled date, I would prefer freshly tested water than water that has been in a bodega or in a corporate pantry for months. Next, if your teeth important to you you should almost definitely skip bottled water. While bottled water does not have fluoride, most city municipal systems add fluoride to their supply.
So, the next time you are at someone’s house or apartment and they don’t have a Brita, don’t worry. Turn on the tap. Forget the marketing bullshit that everyone is selling you. Relax. And enjoy a cold drink of water. Because its probably better for you than a bottle of Poland Spring/Dasani/Dannon/Deer Park/Evian/etc.

Don’t believe me? Check out this past episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit which showed that tap water is usually safer for you, and often better tasting too. Or, if you don’t like “comedy,” you can always peruse the NRDC’s report on bottled water titled “Pure Drink or Pure Hype?” which found that there are major gaps in bottled water regulation and that bottled water is not necessarily safer than tap water.

politics

It Ain’t Easy Being Geo-Green

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I turned on NY 1 this morning to hear that the MTA has decided against buying more hydrogen-powered buses. The experient is over and gas won – a fleet of diesel powered buses is being purchased to replace the older buses being removed from service. That makes Thomas Friedman’s column today in the NY Times even more important. Finally he’s stopped talking about the Middle East and instead is talking about an even greater issue – the environment. He talks about implementing a “Geo-Green Strategy” for the US and this strategy is one that I wholeheartedly embrace and support. Here are the strategy’s 3 main points:

1) We need a gasoline tax that would keep pump prices fixed at $4 a gallon, even if crude oil prices go down. At $4 a gallon (premium gasoline averages about $6 a gallon in Europe), we could change the car-buying habits of a large segment of the U.S. public, which would make it profitable for the car companies to convert more of their fleets to hybrid or ethanol engines, which over time could sharply reduce our oil consumption.

2) We need to start building nuclear power plants again. The new nuclear technology is safer and cleaner than ever. “The risks of climate change by continuing to rely on hydrocarbons are much greater than the risks of nuclear power,” said Peter Schwartz, chairman of Global Business Network, a leading energy and strategy consulting firm. “Climate change is real and it poses a civilizational threat that [could] transform the carrying capacity of the entire planet.”

3) And we need some kind of carbon tax that would move more industries from coal to wind, hydro and solar power, or other, cleaner fuels. The revenue from these taxes would go to pay down the deficit and the reduction in oil imports would help to strengthen the dollar and defuse competition for energy with China.

Heresy! $4 a gallon for gas?! MORE nuclear power plants?! Unfortunately, in a word, YES. In only 100 years, mankind has used up half of the world’s oil supply by building the “modern” world. Our industrialized society, almost completely reliant on technology and computers nowadays, will come crashing down in the next 50 – 100 years unless we can come up with a cheaper and more efficient way of keeping it going. Using and abusing oil is not the way to do it. If you have a better idea, post a comment or let me know.

politics

What is the EPA doing these days?

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Quote of the week:

“It is a sad day in America when a coalition of states must go to federal court to defend the Clean Air Act against the misguided actions of the federal agency created to protect the environment,” the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, said. “But in this matter, the E.P.A. is standing with polluters instead of with the people it is supposed to protect, and the states have no choice but to take this action.”

The United States Environmental Protection Agency, thanks to the Bush Administration, has:

* announced that it was closing pending investigations into more than 100 power plants and factories for violating the Clean Air Act

* dropping 13 cases in which it had already made a determination that the law had been violated.
Got to love that environmental PROTECTION agency!