Walking, Riding Bikes - Too Wacky For Republicans

Are Republicans afraid to step out of their SUVs to take a walk or *gasp* ride a bike? It sounds like a silly stereotype but the National Republican Congressional Committee recently released a video against Democratic nominee Kathy Dahlkemper with just that message.

Dahlkemper, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Phil English to represent Pennsylvania’s 3rd District, is quoted in the video as saying Americans should “walk places” and “ride their bikes”. Apparently, that’s supposed to be a bad thing. Of course those activities seem pretty normal to us but that probably makes us “wacky” too.

Some Rural Students get 4-Day School Week Due to High Fuel Costs

Some rural students across the nation are getting what many of us working adults wish we could have – a four-day week. High fuel costs have made it extremely expensive for schools to manage paying for transportation and cooling. Cutting out one day per week has made it possible to avoid eliminating important school programs and to preserve staff in areas like Kentucky, New Mexico and Minnesota.

From Reuters:

“For rural school districts where buses may travel 100 miles round-trip each day, there certainly are transportation savings worth considering,” said Marc Egan, the director of federal affairs at the National School Boards Association.

Egan said about 100 schools in as many as 16 states have already moved to a four-day school week, many to save money on transportation, heating and cooling.

Nevada’s White Pine School District switched just one of its schools to a four-day week three years ago. Now, with energy costs soaring, four other schools in the district are following suit.

“We’re looking at it district-wide with energy costs being at the forefront of the conversation,” said Bob Dolezal, superintendent of Nevada’s White Pine County School District, which is facing a 14 percent budget cut due to a shortfall in state funding.

Damn, how I would have loved having a four-day week when I was in school. The Reuters article doesn’t specify how the schools make up for that lost time – longer days? Shorter summer? Either way, I bet the kids are thrilled to have a three-day weekend. Four-day school week FTW!

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Flickr user 416 Style

Super-Efficient Train Never Stops Moving

A Taiwanese inventor is proposing a novel idea that could revolutionize train travel: it’s a way to keep the train moving at all times, even through train stations. If that just gave you visions of jumping on and off trains as fast as you can, you’ll be surprised at how easy Peng Yu-Lun’s idea actually is.

From EcoGeek:

Instead, Yu-Lun envisions a small separated car perched atop the train. When the train enters a station, this car slides along on elevated rails that smoothly and gradually remove the car from the rest of the train and bring it to a stop.

Another identical car travels from these elevated tracks and gradually slides along the top of the train to pick up speed for boarding passengers. The end result: a train with no need to stop at stations.

Sure, regenerative braking – the process that converts the energy typically wasted as heat when slowing down and storing it as electrical power in batteries – is a terrific energy saving solution. Many hybrid cars, such as the Prius, use regenerative braking and it’s starting to appear aboard hybrid diesel/electric trains as well. But more efficient still is to maintain your momentum and dispense with a train’s need to make stops.

Check out the video below to see a demonstration (in Chinese).

Now if only we could get trains in America, period. The closest rail service to me is an hour away in South Carolina, and if I wanted to drive down there to catch a train to Florida, I’d have to go to Washington D.C. first. WTF? We obviously have a long way to go here in the U.S. before inventions like this one are helpful to us, but it’s nice to get a peek of the possible future!

Link [Eco Geek] + [You Tube]

Fewer Traffic Signals, Signs & Curbs for Better Safety?

Two European towns have proven that you don’t necessarily need road signs, curbs, sidewalks and stop lights to have safe intersections where motor vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists can share the road. Though this seems counterintuitive, for the Dutch town of Drachten and Bohmte, Germany, it has worked brilliantly to reduce accidents and provide an all-around safer atmosphere for everyone.

I first heard of the idea on NPR back in January, as Kyle James explained Bohmte’s reasoning for removing all traffic control implements in an attempt to manage a busy, often jammed intersection where 12,000 cars and trucks pass through on an average day. Drivers who pass through the area now that it’s been revamped say that traffic moves slower, but in a more orderly way as every person is more aware of those around them. Instead of a free-for-all where each person tries to cut in front of the other in order to get ahead, drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists actually communicate through eye contact and hand gestures to safely navigate the streets.

From NPR:

Advocates of this traffic-management philosophy, called Shared Space, say it works. Ben Hamilton-Baillie is a leading Shared Space advocate based in Bristol, England.

“If you’re faced with a traffic signal, you don’t have to think anymore. Whether you go depends on whether the light is red or green,” he says. “In the absence of such things, we’re perfectly capable of reading and understanding the situation so that if grandma’s in the road ahead of you, you don’t run her over.”

He compares the Shared Space concept to an ice skating rink. It might look chaotic, but people usually navigate the shared area pretty well. In a traffic context, it means cars, bicyclists and pedestrians are in much closer proximity than they usually are.

But common sense and courtesy, as well as drivers feeling more a part of the space they’re moving through, is supposed to cut down on accidents.

OntheCommons.org also explored this idea, citing the case of Drachten, where the main thoroughfare sees 22,000 cars per day. Once they adopted the ‘shared space’ approach, casualties at one junction dropped from 36 over the previous 4 years to only 2 in the 2 years following the removal of traffic lights. Traffic jams no longer occur at all.

From OntheCommons.org:

The idea is to return public spaces to people in order to encourage them to take greater personal responsibility. Monderman explained, “We’re losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior….The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles.”

I think this is a great idea, in that it forces people to stop talking on their cell phones, daydreaming, fiddling with the radio and other things that distract them and actually, you know, DRIVE. Being aware of your surroundings is a huge factor in traffic safety. Navigating the streets of America, you’ll most often find that everyone is so engrossed in themselves and where they need to go that they hardly pay attention to everyone else – they weave in and out of traffic at will and expect everyone else to get out of the way. Removing traffic signs would certainly be one way of making sure people were alert.

One thing that I wonder, though, is how much the training of drivers plays into the success of these programs in the Netherlands and Germany. After all, both countries are known for the rigorous training periods that potential drivers must go through before receiving a license. Many drivers in Holland must take up to 25 two-hour driving classes before obtaining certification. In Germany, a license costs $1500-$2,000 and requires a minimum of 25-45 hours of professional instruction plus 12 hours of theory.

In America, you barely have to meet the low standards of DMV employees for 10 minutes and pass what basically amounts to a memorization test in order to get a license. It’s mind-bogglingly easy to get and retain a driver’s license here, opening the roads up to all sorts of half-blind idiots who don’t even grasp the concept that the left lane is for passing. So, I’m not sure that such a concept would work here without a retooling of the whole driver licensing song-and-dance.

It’s a great theory, though, and I’d love to see more cities adopt it all over the world so we can get a better idea of exactly how well it works. We certainly need some kind of push for drivers to be more conscious of bicyclists and pedestrians, so that the roads are safer for all of us.

Link [OntheCommons.org] + [NPR]
Photo credit: Khuê Pham for NPR

Blacktop Roads About to Get Greener

Signs of American progress on the green front are enormously encouraging. We may be way behind many other developed nations, but we’re slowly awakening from our Bush-induced idiot coma. One such sign is that we’re starting to clean up the process of laying down roads.

Wired’s Autopia blog has it:

There are more than 4 million miles of paved road in the United States, and 93 percent of them are covered in asphalt. Unless you’re backpacking in the wilds of Alaska or wandering the bayous of Louisiana, you are never more than 22 miles from a stretch of blacktop.

That’s a lot of asphalt, and a lot of energy needed to produce it - which is why Hussain Bahia wants to find a greener way to make the stuff. He’s a civil engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he says anything that increases asphalt’s recycled material content or cuts the energy needed to lay it down will have a big impact on the environment - and our pocketbooks.

“This is a no-brainer,” says Bahia, who has been studying asphalt for more than 20 years. “If any person involved in managing our infrastructure looks at the data, why would you spend more energy and money on something else?”

Bahia is part of a $5 million research program called the Asphalt Research Consortium, which hopes to, among other things, make blacktop more ecologically sustainable. One of his first goals is to develop “cold-mix” asphalts that require significantly less energy than conventional asphalt to apply.

Sure, it’s more economics than environmental concerns that’s spurring the change, but we’ll take it regardless! There is no reason why we can’t green up our roads, and it’s another baby step toward sustainability. Next we’d like to see more hybrid or electric public buses on those roads instead of cars… and bike lanes… and a national rapid transit system… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, eh?

Link [Wired]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Eco Fail: Hybrid SUVs Just Aren’t Selling

Welcome HuffPo Readers! If you haven’t been here before, welcome to our little neck of the net. We cover the world of green with a fun, smarky smartass point of view. Visit our home page to see the other stories we’ve done and/or grab our RSS Feed.

Ah, sweet justice for the SUV. Detroit auto makers aren’t seeing the demand for hybrid SUVs that they thought would come this year as models like the Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon were released. Only 1,100 have been sold since January, and the sales goal was 12,000 for the year, putting them pretty far behind.

The New York Times has it:

Giving a four-wheel drive Tahoe a gas-electric hybrid engine raises fuel economy for city driving to 20 miles a gallon from 14.

But to get the better mileage, consumers pay a high price: $53,000, at least $4,000 more than a conventional Tahoe.

Environmentalists see the jumbo hybrids as a small step forward in the effort to reduce America’s fuel consumption.

“Is this a green vehicle? I think it could be a lot greener,” said David Friedman, research director of the vehicles program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group in Washington that focuses on the environment. “The question is whether the improvement in fuel economy is worth the cost.”

Hybrid or not, large S.U.V.’s are fading fast in a market that is shifting quickly to smaller cars and crossovers, S.U.V.-like vehicles built on a car chassis.

While the hybrid 20/21 MPG is certainly an improvement over the 14/20 the non-hybrid SUVs typically get, the fact is that the Toyota Prius gets 46 MPG currently, and a new model set to be released next year will get over 100. That makes paying the extra money for the hybrid SUV seem like a pretty big waste. Consumers aren’t willing to pony up the extra cash, and with SUVs losing popularity in general, hybrid SUVs are looking to go the way of New Coke.

Hybrid SUVs may be a tiny bit better for the environment than regular SUVs, but that doesn’t make them an eco-friendly option. We were a bit afraid that hybrid SUVs would make people think they could have their cake and eat it too, using the ‘hybrid’ angle to defend dumb shit like suburban housewives with 2 kids driving behemoth vehicles to the grocery store. So, we’re happy that hybrid SUVs are an ECO FAIL. Down with SUVs!

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Mark Graham for the New York Times

Tom Brady Rewards Charitable Linemen with Gas Guzzling SUVs

Tom Brady, quarterback for the New England Patriots, is apparently a fairly generous guy. So generous that he gifted three of his teammates with expensive gas guzzling SUVs. He also gifted the rest of the world with increased air pollution and energy consumption. Way to go!

From Green Daily:

At a press conference celebrating the success of his collaboration with Best Buddies International, he thanked three of his teammates who had also donated their time and money to the cause. In return for their generosity (and for “their protection”), Brady gave the offensive linemen really expensive cars to drive around next season — which sounds nice (because hey, who wouldn’t be excited about a $50,000 automobile?), but when you consider that the Audi Q7 gets 12-14 mpg, these hot rides suddenly seem a little less appealing.

Especially considering that Audi has been working on a hybrid version of this model for almost a year, it seems silly to dish out that forward-thinking SUV’s gas guzzling cousins instead.

When this news broke, Green Daily prefaced their story with ‘No one wants to be a jerk about Tom Brady’. Well, I will- screw Tom Brady. I’m no sports fan and all I know about Tom Brady is he left his pregnant girlfriend for Leo DiCaprio’s supermodel leftovers. No doubt his charitable giving makes him a better man than a lot of people out there, but, hey Tom – why not consider future generations of children, too? These giant irresponsible vehicles are going to make the world a less pleasant place for your son’s generation and those that come after him.

Link [Green Daily]

Americans, Quit Your Bitchin’: Gas in Sierra Leone Costs Over $18 a Gallon

Americans are whining and complaining about gas prices like never before. Gas hitting $4 per gallon is considered absolutely crazy – an all but insurmountable obstacle to going about our daily lives. We here at EarthFirst have professed our beliefs about gas prices and the need for Americans to start thinking differently about transportation before. Now we bring you the reality of gas prices throughout the world: Hello, Americans! We’ve been enjoying artificially low gas prices for decades!

The average in many other countries, including the Netherlands, Greece, New Zealand, Japan, Switzerland and England is around $7/gallon. In Denmark, Eritrea, France, Finland, Germany and Iceland, it’s close to $10. People in Sierra Leone, Africa undoubtedly find other ways to get around considering that gas costs a whopping $18.43 per gallon there.  People in these countries actually (gasp!) take public transportation! The horrors!

Want to pay less for gas? Perhaps you should consider moving to Venezuela, where it costs just 17 cents a gallon. Venezuela is known for its highly polarized political climate, evil overlord dictator and ever-rising violent crime, though you will likely enjoy the food and the view from the plane as you fly in and out. Some of the other oil-rich countries with low gas prices include Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran.  I’m sure they’ll welcome you with open arms. Good luck, and send us a postcard.

Link [Wikipedia]
Photo credit: Flickr user Payton Chung

Sound the Alarms! Treehugger Bought an SUV

Treehugger, we really hate to do this. We love you like family. You have always been the eco-conscious big brother that helped us make the right decisions. But your justification for purchasing an SUV – and it’s not even a hybrid SUV – just doesn’t seem to jive. We’re sorry to give you a big fat ECO FAIL for that, bro.

Treehugger’s Mark Ontush (MJO) is based in Boston, has a family of three and telecommutes. His wife rides the bus to work. When his car, used primarily to pick up large purchases and haul visiting family around, gave out on him, he went into the dealership with the intention of getting a hybrid or Smart Car and came out with a Honda CRV. The reasoning is mostly based around, er, moving dishwashers.

From Treehugger:

Having space in a car is a funny thing - you don’t need it all the time, but when you need it, there aren’t a lot of options; you aren’t going to get a dishwasher into a Prius, or transport your extended family around when you are all together and going somewhere. So then you are into renting trucks and vans for these types of situations - which we did for years - and these rentals can really add up.

The other big item was safety. We realized that SUVs are often overrated in this regard, but the fact was that the SUV felt safer. I don’t know why this is exactly; you are up a little higher, it is heavier; you sort of feel that if you get hit, mass will be on your side. Again, this is one of those ‘probably never need it but nice to have things’; environmentally, it’s a luxury item. But the effect is pretty powerful and swayed our decision.

A commenter points out a previous Treehugger article, “SUV’s not safer for Kids”, in response. Other commenters wonder how much stuff MJO is buying every year that he needs to rent vans and trucks to the tune of $1500 total to bring it all home. And, uh, can’t your family ride the bus like everyone else? Tell them it’s part of the city experience!

Treehugger commenters can certainly be an ornery bunch, so it’s not surprising that this post got an SUV-load of scathing comments, but most of them had good points.

Sometimes I’m amazed that the rest of the world can manage to raise families without SUVs, the way they’re talked about in the States. – Ross

This does not sound like good enough justification. I’ve heard this before from my ‘green’ friends — who’s wives ultimately pushed the decision to an SUV.

[there was a wife involved, yes mjo]

When all else fails, blame it on the wife, right? My husband likes to pull that sometimes, too. It takes two, baby!

I generally agree with making the decision that’s right for you at the time, and certainly none of us are saints – but imagine if everyone in America reasoned this way. The fact that Mr. Ontush lives in Boston and not a suburb makes it even worse, since convenient, efficient mass transit abounds. We’re trying to get even suburban people to give up the SUVs, MJO, so when ‘green’ city people do it, it don’t look too good.

Link [Treehugger]

Jet Sharing: For Celebrities Who Don’t Want to Try Too Hard

Gee, it must be hard to be a celebrity. You have to deal with annoyingly adoring fans, are inundated by free stuff at every turn and get flak from us peons about flitting around in private jets. Cause, as we all know, there are so many good reasons why you can’t fly commercial. Like the fact that you’re accompanied by a truckload of baggage and multiple employees who wait on you hand and foot. So, even when you have all these dumb environmentalists telling you it’s really bad for the planet when you fly a private jet, you just aren’t going to stop, no matter what. Well, guess what, your highnesses: now you can share a private jet with other celebs, so you can tell people you’re ‘green’.

Treehugger has it:

If you look at Madonna, her carbon footprint in 2006 was estimated to be 1,018 tons - or 100 times the average British citizen’s. Not only do celebs fly a lot, the more famous they get, the more likely they are to want the convenience and luxury of a private jet. So now you know why Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt never look jet-lagged!

London-based Private Jet Club has launched a service to pair up different jet-setters going to some common cities to reduce their costs and (incidentally) their per-person carbon footprint - and calling it jet pooling. While jet pooling may sound like a ridiculous bit of greenwash, the CO2 load of flying solo in many jets is astronomical, making jet pooling better than nothing.

Sure, it’s better than nothing. I’d much rather hear about, say, all of those LA-based actors flying to Cannes in one private jet than all of them flying separately. So, there’s that. Here’s hoping that some of them will actually do it!

Link [Treehugger] + [Private Jet Club]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Paul McCartney Catches Lexus in a Big Time Eco-Fail

Sir Paul McCartney, or Macca as they call him across the pond, has once again proven that he’s no eco-fraud. Unlike some celebrities we know, he’s not green to be cool – he really does care. So when Lexus gifted him with a Hybrid Limousine to thank him for getting the word out for green automobiles, and he found out that said limousine was delivered by jet, he was understandably pissed.

Ecorazzi has it:

The gesture was nice, but Lexus chose to fly the car from Japan to Britain, creating a carbon footprint almost 100 times bigger than the standard method of shipping.

A source told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper: “…he was horrified after learning it was delivered by plane. Paul has always campaigned for green issues and he can’t understand why anyone would send an enormous car from Japan to Britain on a plane. “

No word yet from Lexus on this dubious choice.  They’re very generous with funding for green events and seem to have a legit interest in green options, so hopefully they’ll do something to make up for such an egregious misstep.

I’m itching to point out that any limousine, hybrid or not, isn’t a great choice when you could be riding in a far greener vehicle (though at least the Lexus hybrid limousine isn’t a stretch model). But, he’s Sir Paul, so I guess he gets away with that sort of thing – screaming mobs of fans and all. He wouldn’t want to ride in a car that a crowd of crazies could easily pick up and cart away to some secret Beatle Mania dungeon.

Link [Ecorazzi]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

A Truck that Runs on Wood Fuel: For the Truly Desperate

When gas prices are high and you’re desperate enough to just not give a f#!k, rigging your vehicle to run on wood fuel might just be your answer. All you need are some materials you’ve probably got laying around in your garage, and a lot of patience, because you’re going to be throwing trees into this thing like there’s no tomorrow.

A listener to the Coast to Coast AM with George Noory radio program, Dave B., submitted this photo along with a few others and had this to say about it:

I ran into this interesting character today at my local farmers market that drove up in an old pickup with a crazy looking contraption in the bed of the truck composed of ducting, PVC pipe, a 50 gallon drum, an old furnace, and of course, a lot of duct tape among other many other things.

I had to ask him what in the world was on the back of his truck. It was a wood burning oven that catches the combustible fumes from the wood coals, condenses any moisture, then feeds the fumes into the engine to make it run. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it.

Apparently this is a concept that was engineered back in WWII when there were fuel supply shortages. I have never heard of it.

Probably would not be good if we all did it, but at least I know there is someone in town with a truck that will run no matter what happens with gasoline.

You gotta hand it to the guy for ingenuity. The setup looks like a traveling moonshine still. If this isn’t giving Big Oil the middle finger, I don’t know what is. It’s not very practical, and the emissions factor makes it less than an eco-friendly choice, but it’s definitely funny.

[Update!] Back in 1981, Mother Earth News published this piece on using firewood to fuel a truck. A guy named Chicken John also has one with a pretty interesting setup

Link [Coast to Coast AM with George Noory]
Photo credit: Dave B., submitted to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory

Do We Have a Right to Quick and Easy Flights to Anywhere in the World?

In the last century, we’ve gotten used to a lot of conveniences. Travel is now extremely easy compared to what it used to be; the long, dusty journeys people used to take just to get a short distance are a nearly forgotten memory. We expect to be easily and conveniently able to get wherever we want, NOW.

That’s why recent news about airline woes and how it could cost us has people worried about the future of transportation. From ABC News:

Nightmare Scenario #1: You’ve got your briefcase in hand, boarding pass in pocket, and your carry-on rolling behind you. You head to the airport with confidence. Except — there are no planes there.

Sound crazy? Keep reading.

Nightmare Scenario #2: You jump in a cab, heading to the airport; you know your airline is there, so no worries about any missing planes. The only problem is, your cab ride to the nearest airport with flights takes four hours.

Impossible? Well, in today’s environment, it could happen. Airlines are bailing out of certain cities and routes. Your city could be next.

“Nightmare scenario”. Interesting choice of words. For the first time in decades, cheap and easy flights from your hometown to your destination of choice aren’t a given. Fares are steadily going up, airlines are charging more for services like checking a second bag and fuel costs will continue to make it all even worse. The idea of airlines cutting routes and cities is a frightening one for many people. But, do we as humans have the right to expect the world to be within 45 minutes of our doorstep?

While technology has afforded us that luxury, it has also contributed to the current mess we’re in. All of this rapid transport has a price, as we’re beginning to learn - both in its contribution to global warming, and the reduction of available energy resources. And unless new technology catches up, we’re likely going to have to make some sacrifices. Being a bit more patient will certainly be a virtue in the coming years. For a start, don’t be the asshole that makes a scene and shouts at some unfortunate employee when your flight gets canceled. It’ll make it a lot less painful for all of us.

Link [ABC News]
Photo credit: Flickr user kyle simourd

Awesome News: America Catching On to the Bike-Sharing Coolness

America lags behind Europe in so many ways, and bicycle use is just one. But now Washington DC is starting a bike-sharing program, allowing people to rent out bicycles whenever they want with the swipe of a membership card.

The New York Times has it:

A new public-private venture called SmartBike DC will make 120 bicycles available at 10 spots in central locations in the city. The automated program, which district officials say is the first of its kind in the nation, will operate in a similar fashion to car-sharing programs like Zipcar.

The district has teamed up with an advertiser, Clear Channel Outdoor, to put the bikes on the streets.

“There’s a lot of stress on our transit systems currently,” said Jim Sebastian, who manages bicycle and pedestrian programs for Washington’s Transportation Department. Offering another option, Mr. Sebastian said, “will help us reduce congestion and pollution,” as well as parking problems.

Rentable bicycles are a great transportation option for college students, getting them to and from important destinations like school, their dorms or apartments and the dive bar down the street that doesn’t check ID’s. While you can still get ticketed for riding a bicycle drunk in some states (a B.U.I.?), it’s definitely a safer route home than getting in the car, even if you do wake up to find asphalt and bike tire tread marks on your face the next day.

Bicycles for rent is already a big trend in cities like Amsterdam, Paris and Florence. When I was in college, I would read longingly about an art student exchange program in the latter city and the romantic descriptions of grabbing a bicycle off a public rack downtown to grab lunch from the corner market and enjoy a picnic on the steps of the Uffizi. Of course, that was before I actually visited Florence and realized people drive like insane sign-ignoring speed demons. At least in America, you’re not as likely to be clipped in the ass by an impossibly tiny car that goes by so fast you can barely catch a glimpse of it.

Link [New York Times]
Photo credit: Flickr user ark

Calculate your Carbon Footprint the Easy Way

Forget the annoyance of having to input a ton of info into an online carbon calculator every day. Carbon Hero offers a new solution that makes the whole process a hell of a lot more user-friendly.

Mobile entrepreneur Andreas Zachariah is working on a java-based mobile application called Carbon Hero, which can automatically tell by GPS if you’re walking, taking the train, or sucking up precious resources chugging all over town in a car. The data it gathers is then used to calculate your carbon profile, comparing it to other users and showing when you make improvements or slide toward carbon-heavy choices.

Carbon Hero is still in the testing phase. Zachariah estimates that it’ll be available by the end of this year or early 2009. It’ll roll out in the UK first, followed by Europe and then the US.

This application will be quite a kick in the ass for people who aren’t trying hard enough to reduce their carbon footprint, but want to improve. I know it’ll get me to waddle on down to the co-op when I need a handful of grocery items, instead of taking the GuiltMobile.

Link [earth2tech] & [Carbon Hero]

The Oracle of Omaha Loves Him Some Railroad Stocks

Get this- railroads are hot again. CNN Money reports that Warren Buffett has been quietly buying up stock in railroad companies.- he got 18% of Burlington Northern Santa Fe in January. Railroads were deregulated in 1980 and the industry has been on an efficiency boosting tear since then. Productivity has more than doubled since 1990 and technological advancements have pushed fuel efficiency by more than 80% since 1980.

Railroads are a lot more efficient than trucks, emitting 65% less emissions than trucks alone on trips over 1,000 miles. Expanding capacity on the rail network is not easy and demand is rising so the railroads are able to raise prices. Railroad stocks have mostly been immune to the softening in the market and after word of Buffett’s buy got out the companies he bought into all saw boosted stock prices.

It’s good (for your bank account) to be green(er).

Link [CNN Money]

Five Dollar Gas Plus is The New Reality- Time to Hybrid Up

$5/gallon gas in Gordo, California. Welcome to the new reality.

Link [San Luis Obispo]

Photo Credit: Flickr user Momo The Monster

Higher Gas Prices + Road Congestion = Greener Mass Transit

Is everyone else just getting killed by gas prices? I can’t believe how short a distance $20 in gas now gets me. I work from home and don’t drive much and I’m still hating the wallet gouging the gas pump is digging me for. I know gas is never going to be cheap again and the whole situation has prompted me to make some big life changes.

First, me and my family are moving into downtown Portland, Maine. We moved back east a few years ago and have been living in the rural just north of the city of 100,000. Over the past few months we realized that we were sick of driving everywhere and sick of the money it cost us to do so. We’ll be moving to Portland’s West End, a cool old money section of town that is smack dab next to just about anything you’d want to walk to on the city’s peninsula. I’m getting an electric skateboard and downsizing my car.

Grist’s Ryan Avent points out that oil prices are at an all time high in real terms. Gas prices peak during the summer so it’s likely a lot of the country could see $4/gallon gas come June. He hopes the higher prices combine with hassles of congestion will spur our investment and focus on clean mass transit. He has it:

If new infrastructure primarily comes in the form of new lane miles, then congestion reduction will only be temporary; eventually, developers will respond to the new investments by building along the new capacity — that is, outward. In the space of a few years, the congestion benefits will be erased, and with no reduction in vehicle miles traveled or emissions, since increased efficiency may well be canceled out by longer commutes. Critically, exposure to higher fuel costs will remain.

If, however, congestion is addressed by the implementation of congestion pricing, along with significant investments in high-capacity rail service, both inter- and intracity, then efforts to clear the nation’s arteries will also yield reductions in emissions and miles traveled, and the addition of automobile alternatives will make it easier for commuters to substitute away from driving when gas costs soar.

We’re going to spend a lot of money on infrastructure in the near future. It is critical that we use that money to maximum good effect. New highways will bring little to no long-term return on investment. If we’re going to spend, we should spend smart.

As much as higher gas prices hurt my individual pocket, it could be a very effective way to push things in a smarter, greener way. Let’s hear it for $5/gallon!

Link [Gristmill]

As Green as You Can Get: Shipping Wine With the Winds

Here’s something that I hope I read more of: French wine makers are using a three mast sailing vessel to ship 60,000 bottles of wine from France to Dublin, Ireland.

Brilliant!

Using wind to ship things around the world is something we’ve been doing for a long, long time. When the steam engine, and then later diesel burners, came onto the scene, the winds were mostly left behind. There has recently been some hopeful movements back to using wind to ship cargo in the form of the super kite- a giant rig that connects to traditional bunker oil burning ships that can save 15-20% of the fuel otherwise needed.

Each bottle of greenly shipped wine will come with the label “‘Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet.’” Here’s a quick bit from the Guardian:

Later this month 60,000 bottles from Languedoc will be shipped to Ireland in a 19th-century barque, saving 18,375lb of carbon. Further voyages to Bristol, Manchester and even Canada are planned soon afterwards.

The three-mast barque Belem, which was launched in 1896, the last French merchant sailing vessel to be built, will sail into Dublin following a voyage from Bordeaux that should last about four days. The wines will be delivered to Bordeaux by barge using the Canal du Midi and Canal du Garonne, which run across southern France from Sète in the east, via Béziers in Languedoc. Each bottle will be labelled: ‘Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet.’ Although the whole process will end up taking up to a week longer than a flight, it is estimated it will save 4.9oz of carbon per bottle.

Link [Guardian] via Environmental Graffiti

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