The Best Tool We Have

"The oil rig rumbles to life, breaking the early morning quiet in this neighborhood of urban townhouses and big box stores with a deafening screech and roar."

So reads the lead in a story by Gillian Flaccus for Newsweek. Because the price of oil is so high, many wells previously deemed empty enough are being revisited with new and better technology to drain every last drop.

There are some concerns, according to the article, that some of the wells have been in disrepair for a long time, that some of the new ways of drilling and extracting could prove unstable, and that unforeseen environmental effects could be big.

I am intrigued by this.
What do we revisit when the stakes are raised -- when time passes...
The crumbs we leave behind during prosperity may be nourishment later.

Then I came across a great website. The website for the Union of Concerned Scientists. They have all sorts of great information there!

And look at this:

"Increasing fuel economy is by far the best tool we have for cutting our oil dependence. It will deliver fast results. It has been proven to work from experience—we roughly doubled the fuel economy of our cars between the 1970s and the late 1980s. We can do this right now. The technology needed to increase the average fuel economy of our cars and trucks to 40 miles per gallon (mpg) has already been developed, but for the most part is collecting dust on automakers' shelves.

If we increased fuel economy to 40 mpg over 10 years, then within 15 years we would have saved more oil than we would ever get out of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge over its entire 40-50 year life. And the savings from better fuel economy would keep on growing indefinitely, while the oil wells would dry up."

I'm not exactly sure what these two things have in common -- but I know I was relieved for the second -- and desperately needed a story that sounded not quite so desperate.

Hypocracy is the Greatest Luxury

My friend from Paris said he thought gas was about $7/gallon there. I thought it would be easy to figure out -- but not. I've been looking for a half an hour and the closest I've gotten is an English blog post from December.


They put the price in December at about $9 per gallon.

Yesterday I went to the ocean.

I got a little lost. I do that sometimes -- it's my brain's way of tuning out. When I was really stressed out in college I would just 'go for a drive.' I drove cross country for 3 months when I was 22. Camped with my German Shepard from North Carolina to Big Sur.

Yesterday, I think I spent about $20 on gas -- just judging vaguely from the gauge. I think it should have cost me about $10. Though doing the numbers that estimate seems off. Maybe today I will follow things a little more closely.

I have a big car -- it's a really really safe car -- I got my first one when my daughter was born in 2001, and I've been in several accidents since and think they have saved us quite a bit of injury. I think I get about 20 mpg very roughly on average, driving mostly in the city. It also has a very big tank.

If gas was $9/ gallon it would cost $162 to fill up my tank.
It would cost me $20 to get to the beach and $50 to get lost. I use about a tank a week -- just doing the minimal things that I do -- school work grocery shopping. $162/week is more than I spend on anything else.

I firmly believe we should end subsidies to gas companies in this country. We consume a disproportionate amount of the world's oil and emit a disproportionate amount of the world's pollution.

I am not ready to not be able to afford to go to the ocean on a Sunday afternoon.

Life these days
can be so complex
we don't make the time
to stop and relfect
I know from first hand experience
one can go delerious
seriously it can be like that
But before I put my foot in my mouth
'cause that's what I'm about to start
talkin about
please let me confess before all the rest
that I'm afflicted
by this addicted like most in the US
It's tough to make a living when you're an artist
It's even tougher when you're socially conscious
Careerism, opportunism
can turn the politics into cartoonism
Let's not patronize or criticize
Let's open the door and look inside
Pull the file on the state of denial

Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury
Raise the Double Standard

-- Disposable Heroes of Hiphopcricy