The cost of driving
Yet again we hear the bleating people and groups complaining about the cost of fuel for our heating, transportation and agriculture.
We pontificate, complain and conjecture as to why this is happening, how we have to become active to stop it and how we have the right to continue doing what we want because that is what we want.
We have had warning that for one reason or another the end to cheap fossil fuels was coming, that we were living on borrowed time. Did we look at the facts, listen to the geologists, environmentalists, actuaries and geophysicists who told us that we were playing into the hands big oil and the enriching the Middle East, as well as pushing our planet headlong into thermageddon?
I’m afraid we did just the opposite. We went out and bought the biggest gas-guzzling behemouths we could find, fell in love with urban sprawl and empowered our military to become an arm of big oil and transportation interests. Did we finance alternate energy, look at reduction or put a hold on our runaway consumption and population? Not a chance.
And today as the price of gasoline spirals ever upwards do we slow down, consume less, stretch each litre of fuel? The maddening race continues as we rush ever faster hither and yon and complain that fuel taxes and big oil are gouging us blind. Every highway has almost all driving faster than ever ignoring the simple laws of science that govern consumption.
Imagine what the world might look like today, if we didn’t burn fossil fuels, if we had developed renewable energies, perfected the hydrogen economy when the first oil crisis hit in 1973.
Imagine if we didn’t flow trillions of dollars a year to people half a world away bent on financing our destruction with our own dollars, impoverishing our middle and lower classes while at the same time enriching the greedy elite.
Or go even further back and look at the antics of General Motors, Mac Truck, Standard Oil, Firestone, along with the duplicitous governments in Ottawa and Washington and the like, who illegally destroyed our rail network so that we would become addicted to the automobile.
So here we sit stewing in a pot of hubris of our own making, having traded the future for plush, wheeled parking lots called SUVs.
Bring on the higher fossil fuel costs, bring on the shortages, bring on the taxes. The sooner we get past the idea that we can do what we want because we can, the sooner we can get back to our senses and stop unlimited growth.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:34 am
My beef with car companies (GM, Ford, etc.):
They say millions of dollars are being poured into R&D for electric, hybrid and alternative fuel cars. If so don’t you think they should be able to make a cost effective zero, or close to it, pollution vehicle? (excluding manufacture and electricity generation). Don’t share me opinion? Take a look on Youtube and search “Gav’s EV” and “Say No to Gas”. You find two people who were frustrated with gasoline prices and did something about with there own simple mechanical knowledge and the internet. Wow. Seems a little odd doesn’t it?
My question for Mr. Zurawski would be: In your opinion, do believe that having fully electric cars would be more “environmentally friendly” keeping in mind that somtimes the electricity to power them is generated by coal and other polluting fuels?
May 21st, 2008 at 5:06 am
Richard, my wife and I have advanced to the next stage of Transportation , we both bought small four cylinder cars as we both work in different parts of town and between the two of us we burn less fuel a week now than we were were on a big single car. It’s time to drop the statis simbles and get real. I would love to see the government allow the small electric cars on the road. Their excuse is the electric cars are too slow, is that not what we need on our streets slower fuel saving traffic on the roads? How long would it take to adjust to geting up a bit earlier to be at work on time?
This area needs to get more traffic on rails also. There is away to much truck traffic on our main high-ways that could be sent by rail.
In Sussex N.B. they are trucking waste water from the potash mines to Saint John and dumping it into the harbour (360 trips )when this could be brought by rail in one trip and cause no road dammage. I don’t know if this makes any sense or not but it’s does to me.