daria Wrote:Even so, the hybrid SUVs might be good for someone who really needs the space and utility afforded by the vehicle type (and I don't mean just to cart a bunch of brats around, 
). So no, they're not getting the mileage of a Prius, but they are doing better than they otherwise would with a regular SUV. Plus, since they shut off under a certain speed, they're letting out no emissions during those times.
I had a hybrid Escape for a while, and it got almost as good of mileage as my Focus. It's nothing to brag about in the big picture of all available vehicles, but it was great for an SUV. I never even wanted an SUV, but my ex-fiance was insisting I get something "higher and safer" after a particularly bad accident we were in (in his Jeep) that had it happened in my Focus, I would have been pinned in, if not seriously injured.
Once my commute changed to make it less efficient since the hybrid was backwards on the city vs highway mileage, I went back into a Focus. I know I'm slightly more fuel efficient now, and we don't have as much need for the space as we did before (except lately, and I've got no friends with trucks close by-darnit), but damn if I don't still think about the fact that my car doesn't "shut off" anymore at red lights and on certain roads where the Escape used to do that. I really miss that aspect of my hybrid.
That really is a good point about the hybrid. I really like the Ford Escape version. I too drive a Focus. Couple weeks ago we were seriously thinking about getting a Santa Fe but had to rethink due to rising gas costs. Eventually we will need to get a small SUV if we decide to buy a pop up camper but seems like that dream is going away as the gas goes higher and higher lol!
Hey Jo! Repost of the article. Could one of you more mathematically inclined people check my numbers?
Ok, once I was asked about why, despite my generally liberal, indeed almost socialist outlook, that I really didn't seem interested in environmental issues. My response was simple. No matter how much aluminum I throw out, or gas I burn in my gas guzzler, or paper I throw in the trash, the amount of damage that I wlll do in my entire lifetime is basically mitigated by the fact that I will never reproduce. In fact, a typical American family of four will use up more resources within my lifetime than I ever will even if they practice the three R's of reduce, reuse, and recycle. When I'm gone, my contribution to the destruction of the environment stops. The family? It goes on because even when they die, their children will use resources.
I'm going to illustrate why environmentally conscious breeders are hypocrites by using a scenario involving a wasteful childfree couple and a so-called environmentally conscious family. A few assumptions are in order. The first is that the couples are the same age, that every 25 years a new generation is born, each family generation will have exactly two children who in turn will have two children, and that the amount of resources each person uses will be average out over their lifetime and that the childless people use ten times as many resources as the eco-friendly breeders. Let's chart out the decades.
The wasteful childless couple is born and each year they generate ten tons of trash. I use trash because it's an easily made image and because I believe I read that the average person generates one ton of trash in a year. They grow to 25 and decide to not have children. They live out the rest of their lives together, grow old, and pass on.
From birth to breeding age - 500 tons of trash.
The middle aged years - 500 tons of trash.
Their elder years - 500 tons of trash.
That's 1500 tons of trash the childless couple have produced. That's a lot of garbage, right?
Let's see the result of reproduction by people who are more gentle in their impact on mother earth.
The family couple is born, they decide to minimize their impact. They also decide that they would like a family, but they won't increase the pressure on the ecosystem so they will only have zero population growth. They will even instill this in their children so they will be less of a problem than the so-called selfish childfree who are wasteful. One assumption needs to be made. Obviously each child born will marry outside of the family line. In my example we will only count the blood descendants of the family. The impact of the spouses of each child will be ignored. This is only to minimize the math which is already bad enough to follow.
I'll number each generation to help us keep track.
Generation Alpha is born and grows to childbearing age. They have twins at the age of 25. The family grows older and their children have two children at the age of 25. Their parents are grandparents at 50. Things progress nicely until sadly, old age takes its course and the original progenitors are gone. The occasion isn't all sad though because the second generation just had grandchildren! Let's do the numbers for 75 years, the same time the childfree couple lived.
Generation Alpha is born and grows to childbearing age. They produce one ton of trash for 25 years and there are two of them. 1x25x2=50
50 tons of trash.
They have their children and the four of them grow 25 years older. 1 ton of trash x 4 people x 25 years = 100 tons of trash.
100 tons of trash in this 25 years plus the prior years is 150 tons of trash.
Generation Alpha is 50 years old. Generation Beta is 25 years old and just had two children each. Remember, they are only replacing themselves and their uncounted (for this scenario) spouse. This means Generation 3 consists of four people. That means you have eight people now. Two grandparents, two parents (minus their spouses), and the four grandchildren. 1 ton of trash x 8 people x 25 years = 200 tons of trash.
200 tons of trash from plus the 150 tons accumulated is 350 total tons of trash.
Now after the 75 years the wasteful childfree produced 500 tons of trash. The eco-friendly family produced 350 so you could argue that the impact they make is less. Right? WRONG! In the childfree couple's lifetime they made more of an impact, but what about the future? Let's crunch some numbers.
Generation Alpha has passed on. Generation Beta is 50 years old. Generation Gamma has just reproduced and created Generation Delta. They had eight children between the four of them. 2 Betas, plus 4 Gammas, plus 8 Deltas for a total of 14 people minus their spouses. 1 ton of trash x 14 people x 25 years = 350 tons of garbage. Think about that. In one 25 year span THEY HAVE ALREADY MADE THE SAME AMOUNT OF TRASH THAT TOOK 75 YEARS PRIOR! This is a total of 700 tons of trash generated. Let's go ahead another 25 years
Generation Beta has passed on. Generation Gamma is 50 years old. Generation Delta has just reproduced and created Generation Epsilon. They had 16 children between the eight of them. 4 Gammas, plus 8 Deltas, plus 16 Epsilons equals a cenus of 28 people. 1 ton of trash x 28 people x 25 years = 700 tons of trash. Interesting thing to note. With "zero population growth" the amount of trash doubles every generation as does the population. Think about this. We are at 100 years after the start of my scenario and the childfree couple produced 500 tons of trash in a wasteful lifestyle. The so-called environmentally aware breeders have now produced 1400 tons. Let's go ahead another 50 years. That will place us at two human lifetimes. Only 150 years. The United States is already over 80 years older than that.
Generation Gamma passes while Generation Omega is born. The census count is 8 Deltas, plus 16 Epsilons, plus 32 Omegas. 1 ton of trash x 56 people x 25 years = 1400 tons of trash.
Generation Delta passes, Generation Omega has children. The census count is 16 Epsilons, plus 32 Omegas, plus 64 people who wish I had paid more attention to the Greek alphabet. Total is 112 people who generated 2800 tons of trash.
The total amount of trash produced in 150 years by the eco-friendly family is a staggering 4900 tons. Almost ten times as much as the childfree who only had produced 500 tons despite their incredibly wasteful lifestyle. Now imagine if they had be as gentle as the family over their lifetime.
THAT WOULD BE 1500 TONS OF TRASH THAT THE WASTEFUL CHILDFREE COUPLE MADE AS COMPARED TO THE 4900 MADE BY THE BREEDERS!
This is why I really don't bother recycling. Even if I make my impact as minimal as possible, one single generation will wipe out all the things I did. It doesn't matter if I pour used motor oil down the drain, or toss recyclables into the landfill, or dump old tires in a river. In one hundred years, my excesses will heal. The paper I threw out has become compost. The metals I discarded are rusting away to be reabsorbed by the earth. The oil I poured down the drain has broken down into harmless compounds on the sea floor. My body itself has become part of the earth. My extravagance is gone. The people who had children and who like to tell stories about how wasteful I am around their fireplace? They carefully use only locally grown organic produce. They ride only public transit, eschewing an automobile. They diligently use items that can be sorted and recycled. They like to think they are superior to me, but despite this, they don't realize that in two human lifetimes, they will be doing far more damage than I ever did, AND THEY DON'T EVEN REALIZE IT.
We do a lot, but we don't preach. I do post to my blogs about the things we are doing, but that is meant to share with others of a like mind and not to try and change anyone's mind. We all have to make the decisions that are best for us.
Truthfully, we are doing more than I probably could if I lived alone. With D living with me, I have an extra set of hands to help me get things done. He works out of our home, so he is around to do things. If I were living alone, I might not be doing as much, simply because there are only so many hours in the day and my physical energy is limited.
We do curbside recycling, but I also gather things like scrap metal and fabric and such to take over to our transfer station, once we have full containers for that. We catch rainwater and use that for cleaning and watering the garden. We are growing veggies (in pots--we can't dig in our yard) and plan to handle it all without chemicals. We hang our laundry to dry. (We are not supposed to, but we do anyway.) We compost (we are not supposed to, but we do anyway.) We can't afford to get solar panels, but we would like to do that some day. We use candles and solar lanterns at night for just moving around the house. (We watch a movie and have the lights on over dinner, of course--this is just for like going to the bathroom or seeing to go downstairs to get something, etc.) We reuse things a lot. We use Freecycle to get rid of and to acquire stuff.
These are all things we choose to do, but I'm not one to impose my views on others.
I have an equally dim view to some of you all on humanity and on our future; however, I feel I am an extension of the Earth, rather than a tenant. I feel connected to it/Her. I do the things I do, because I care and I want to do my part to ease Her burden. (This has to do with my religious beliefs.)
Again--we all have to make the choices that are best for us.
Jen M.
I'm a little late to this thread, but I was thinking about all the hype about the 'green' movement yesterday.
I think honestly the movement is doing itself a disservice going full force now, when our economy is in the shitter.
For one thing, we are all trying to figure out how to afford the higher gas prices we have no choice to use, how we are going to pay our bills if the jobs continue to become even more scarce and generally if the middle class will be around in the next couple of years !
Now is really not the time to force this green stuff down our throats. I'm all for doing what we can, but some of the changes being pushed are expensive and idealisitc. Certainly not things that the average home can afford right now.
Frankly I think people are likely to turn away from it with passion when they are currently trying to figure out how they are simply going to survive this downturn. They don't give a damn about the next 50yrs when they can't pay the bills next month.
GR8PYRZ Wrote:I'm a little late to this thread, but I was thinking about all the hype about the 'green' movement yesterday.
I think honestly the movement is doing itself a disservice going full force now, when our economy is in the shitter.
For one thing, we are all trying to figure out how to afford the higher gas prices we have no choice to use, how we are going to pay our bills if the jobs continue to become even more scarce and generally if the middle class will be around in the next couple of years !
Now is really not the time to force this green stuff down our throats. I'm all for doing what we can, but some of the changes being pushed are expensive and idealisitc. Certainly not things that the average home can afford right now.
Frankly I think people are likely to turn away from it with passion when they are currently trying to figure out how they are simply going to survive this downturn. They don't give a damn about the next 50yrs when they can't pay the bills next month.
I can see your point, but another thing to consider is that, if congress and corporations decide to invest in "green technology" it will create jobs. Maybe the displaced auto industry workers can be retrained to build wind farms or something. I'm not up on what's going on, but I know that it's a big deal in Colorado, and it's becoming its own industry.
hockeyhound Wrote:GR8PYRZ Wrote:I'm a little late to this thread, but I was thinking about all the hype about the 'green' movement yesterday.
I think honestly the movement is doing itself a disservice going full force now, when our economy is in the shitter.
For one thing, we are all trying to figure out how to afford the higher gas prices we have no choice to use, how we are going to pay our bills if the jobs continue to become even more scarce and generally if the middle class will be around in the next couple of years !
Now is really not the time to force this green stuff down our throats. I'm all for doing what we can, but some of the changes being pushed are expensive and idealisitc. Certainly not things that the average home can afford right now.
Frankly I think people are likely to turn away from it with passion when they are currently trying to figure out how they are simply going to survive this downturn. They don't give a damn about the next 50yrs when they can't pay the bills next month.
I can see your point, but another thing to consider is that, if congress and corporations decide to invest in "green technology" it will create jobs. Maybe the displaced auto industry workers can be retrained to build wind farms or something. I'm not up on what's going on, but I know that it's a big deal in Colorado, and it's becoming its own industry.
Indeed!
This is EXACTLY the time to shove "green" down our throats. No one is interested in hybrid cars when gas is dirt cheap -- it's only when gas is hideously expensive that we make it economically possible for green technologies to be supported, either by Congressional support or by the marketplace.
Jobs will be created by the green movement. The sector which has lost the most jobs -- construction -- will benefit by learning "green" skills, such as how to install solar panels, how to use alternative materials, etc. People will begin to demand these things. Also, the price of these things -- particularly solar panel conversions -- will go down when more people have the skills to install them. Right now, solar panel installations is a rare niche skill, so you pay a premium for it -- but when you can hire an illegal in a battered van to skilfully install solar panels, that's good for everybody! People get jobs, and people will convert to solar.
If Detroit were smart, if would be supporting alternative fuel technologies, to replace the loser employers that are GM, Ford, etc. Michigan also has a tremendous job crunch, and they should be doing their damndest to attract green tech.
PG, I could not agree with you more.
These transitions take time, though, and I see GR8PYRZ's point clearly--It IS tough to think about "trendy" things (not really trendy, but to some people it is just that) when you don't know how you're going to feed your family next pay period.
Over the past few weeks, I've had to cancel a bunch of things due to not having gas money. Today, I had to choose NOT to fill our tank, because I need cat litter and cat food. It's getting really rough.
Jen M.
If it's any consolation, a lot of "green" techniques can save you money. Anything that reduces the amount of gas, electricity, or water you use will save you $$.
Yes. We have started turning off the actual circuits to certain appliances when we are not using them--things for which you can't use a power strip: water heater (we turn it on about an hour before we need it and then turn it off again,) dishwasher, stove, washer and dryer. (We really only use the stove about once a day, for making dinners. When we use these things more, we obviously leave the circuits on.
This is a tip I got from a frugal living board I'm on.
Also, every gallon of rainwater we catch for gardening and such is a gallon we are not paying for.
Jen M.