[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by GaryV1188

I note from your profile that you live in S Meriden, CT. A bedroom community, I presume, from it's location. Would you and your family be willing to move into a high-rise in Hartford or NYC to save energy?

In our particular case, even though we live in a little residential neighborhood in the center of Connecticut, our house is only a block away from my mother's job (an elementary school), and only a few miles from my father's job (a municipal electric utility company), most of which can be covered by a paved bike trail. When it's not raining or snowing, my mother usually walks to work, and my father will take his mountain bike and has been seriously considering purchasing a Segway to commute.

If my parents worked in Hartford or NYC, they'd probably move much closer to their jobs, if not into the city itself. (Especially since my mother hates driving in highway traffic with a passion, and does everything she can to avoid it.)

Originally Posted by GaryV1188

Would you be willing to spend an additional $3000, $5000 or $10000 on your new car, so that you could maybe save $500 of gasoline per year?

$3K yes, $5K maybe. At $3K extra, and with $500 savings per year, you'd pay off the extra costs after six years, and after that would save money. If you put 10-15K miles onto your car per year, it's quite reasonable to have a car for 8-10 or more years, meaning you'd save several thousand dollars over the life of the car.

It's just like the energy-efficient light bulbs. As each of the regular incandescent light bulbs in our house dies, we've been converting them over to the daylight-corrected fluorescent ones. (Except for the halogen ones on dimmers, as you can't put fluorescent bulbs on a dimmer.) Even though they cost more, you get the equivalent of a 100W light-bulb with only 37W of power. Plus, add in their increased lifespan, and you'll save money over the life of the bulb.

When you work out the math, and you can have a net gain in money over the lifespan of the product, it's worth the extra upfront cost.

Originally Posted by GaryV1188

How much are people willing to pay to achieve energy independence? That's the big question this country has to answer. Just telling people what they "should" do won't make them do it. Telling people what they "must" do won't be politically acceptable in this country. How do you get people to change their lifestyles?

Lead by example.

There's not much one can do about existing "grandfathered" development, but if city planners across the country all started to develop better planning methods and tax credits to make better use of the land, and encourage better/higher zoned developments around mass transit stations for future growth, then we have started off on the right path.

90 years ago, most towns and cities in this country had efficient transportation networks and city planning. People lived near where they worked, and if they did live in the suburbs, they lived near the train or trolley line. Cars undid all that, for better or worse, depending on your point-of-view. There's nothing wrong with suburbia, as long as it's close enough to a transit line to make it worthwhile.

The challenge for the 21st century is going to be balancing our desire to live out in surburbia with efficient city planning and transportation networks. And the only way to get people to want to do it is by just starting. Cities across the country are expanding their commuter train service, and building light rail networks. Las Vegas recently became the first American city to begin using transit monorails in dense urban areas. Tax breaks for living closer to transit stations help people and businesses migrate back into better, denser, more livable developments.

If our government moved several billion per year from the Hgihway department to Amtrak, we might actually be able to have a decent high-speed rail network. Right now, we are the only industrialized country in the world which lacks a bullet train network that's competitive with airlines for short and medium trips. (I can see where large [rural] portions of our country don't need high speed train service, but certainly corridors like NYC-Chicago-Denver-LA, or from Seattle-SF-LA-San Diego, or DC-Atlanta-Orlando-Miami would benefit greatly from them.)

After all, no matter how much the government throws at expanding our highways, they are always just as crowded and packed as they were before. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then why do we keep pouring tons of money into highways hoping that each new expansion will be the one to make a difference when they never do?

Originally Posted by 6600gt

When you factor in economics, many of these fuels just can't compete with gasoline.

Brazil is entirely energy dependent because of ethanol-based fuels. They no longer have to import a single barrel of oil to sustain their economy. While fertilizer and run-off are sources of pollution, the United States is one of the largest farming nations in the world. The Midwest is HUGE. Our government also subsidizes farmers who plant way more food than is actually used. Basically, we have the potential to create our own bio-fuel economy.

While bio-fuels may not be the perfect answer (fertilizer and run-off pollutes our water, ethanol doesn't contain the same bang-for-the-buck in the octane department as gasoline), they can solve many of our short term goals. If GM and Ford currently sell Flex Fuel cars in Brazil, why can't they sell them here? If we have the potential to plant vast amounts of corn and ethanol-producing plants in the United States, thus lowering the amount of foreign oil we need to import, is this not a positive and attainable goal?

Would not the improved (though not perfect) carbon emissions also help our country in our quest to lower emissions of greenhouse gases by virtue of the recent G8 Global Warming conference?

Since most of our foreign relations are muddied because of concerns over oil, if we drastically reduce our need for foreign oil, we can better avoid confrontations in the Middle East. Right now the Middle East has one "ace in the hole" over the United States (and the world), and that is that we need their oil. And with China and India fast become large oil consumers as well, we are increasingly going to be fighting over a ever shrinking supply of oil.

I wouldn't be surprised if a large war was to erupt in 50 years over oil supplies, or at the very minimum very tense relations between the countries of the world. Surely, wouldn't the United States rather avoid such a confrontation and seek energy independence as well?


Wow, this turned out to be a long post.

But if you read nothing from the above commentary, the only true solution to everything is by tackling the problem from all sides, and taking steps and implementing better solutions from all angles. Right now it doesn't matter what those steps look like, as long as we keep moving forward. As Walt Disney loved to say, "It's time to stop talking and start doing!"