DEC 07

I think the whole world needs to take a step back and re-evaluate our lifestyles, what's truly important, how we can sustain this planet that we have destroyed, and help one another once again. Life has just gone way over the top, and everyone's priorities really got out of wack. As many are jobless around the world, and life has definitely stopped as a result of the economic stutdown, this is definitely the time to rebuild our societies, our psyche's, and our priorities in a manner in which our children's, children's, children's grandchildren will have a planet that they are proud of.

-Maurizio Maranghi -

If people are required by law to pay for the pollution resulting from consumption, then our consumption will become much less environmentally damaging. For example, requiring people who release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to pay for their removal would stop global warming. With such systems constraining people from causing major damage to the earth, people could then build big or small as desired without creating major problems.

For the people who do want to save energy, technology advances allows people to keep the same size television that simply uses less power or drive a car in such a way that it will be less harmful in the environment. Technology has no soul, it's the people who use it.

It is old news, but I liked the quote " if there were 300 million of us instead of 6 billion going on 9, we could all drive Hummers and it would not make an impact!". people are the problem, and people are the answer.

6 lines on a highway is a waste of space.
You only need 3.

One for trucks and slow vehicles, one for normal vehicles and a third one for overtaking slow cars.

Also, speedy trains are generally faster and more convenient on distances over 100 Kilometers.

What is more important is how we can sustain our planet's condition and also not to get worst. It is not about the size and which is better, it is how we live to help the planet.

With interstates, those 100,000 cars can speed along a seven lane highway at efficient speeds without ever tapping the breaks. Highways are much more efficient.

Highways are a double-edged sword for exactly the reasons you explain. Here in southern New England, we tend to widen our highways to make room for more cars, even though studies show that if you make it bigger, more cars will use it rather than allowing the cars already using it to spread out.

One thing that you omitted from your article, however, is how cars are made. Back in the days prior to interstate highways, cars were not designed to be efficient at higher sustained speeds. It wasn't until people started using highways all the time that car makers made cars designed to be more efficient at 55-65 mph. Had highways existed earlier, the gas usage would have been far worse as cars would have burned through fuel much faster to keep up with higher speed limits.

Car makers have finally realized that they need to make cars that run efficiently in both low speed stop and go traffic and at higher highway speeds. The only problem now is that the majority of highways have speed limits that allow people to drive faster than the ideal speed for fuel economy, which is between 55 and 65 for most cars.

BTW I love this blog. I think this is a great way of looking at what really is "greener." I wanted to pass this "very green" company along to you for a possible blog post in the future: http://www.cellitused.com. They buy and recycle your old electronics and cell phones.

Establishment of personal petro-product consumption quotas would go a long way to limit waste and to reign in the habits of the wealthy that seem to think going green is just another call to consumption. For instance, here's your 15 gallons of gas for the month. Use it wisely, or you might end up walking, taking a bus, carpooling or staying home.

@RunawayJim

That's a really good point. Highways eliminate traffic signals (regardless of speed) which mean less fuel wasted, but if they lowered interstate speed limits, even less fuel would be wasted.

enjoyed the article, but "breaks" is what you take in the spring. "brakes" is what stops your car.

I am a true believer that science and technology can save our hides. Everything that we make can be made much much more efficiently. Now I am not saying that we dont need to change our spending habits, but its not like we can afford to go from the ultra consumption society that we have today to simply going completely cold turkey. Imagine what that would do to our economy. We would all be unemployed and every country in the world bankrupt. We need to take steps - EVERY DAY - to take power away from the corporations that run nearly every facet of our lives, because they are the ones that want and encourage us to spend so recklessly on hummers and apples that are grown half way around the world. We need to give power back to the people in tandem to giving the people a crash course in making sustainable not just a buzz word, but a lifestyle change that has to be made or we are just rushing headlong into making the Earth too toxic for our survival.

That effect is known as the Jevons paradox. The increase of efficiency leads to increase in the consume. This effect is going to plague any technological advance in green (efficient) technologies.

Still if 1bn more people can afford air travel that is a job well done.

All that is left is to get the A380 to run off sustainable fuels and we are sorted.

Unless your motive is actually to keep a large percentage of the population effectively banned from air travel

This is a good restatement in layman's terms of Jevon's paradox. It is also why technological solutions to environmental problems so rarely have their intented effect. Environmental problems cannot be solved in terms of efficiency. We simply have to find a way back to a culture and civilization of low-tech sustainability. If we keep fooling ourselves into thinking we can solve this problem by the same method we created it in the first place we are doomed. The people who say "you can't go back" are never the people standing at the edge of the precipice, after all.