“It’s called carsharing. You share access to hundreds of Flexcar vehicles, often within a five-minute walk of your home or work. You reserve a car online or by phone, you drive - to a meeting, to run errands, or to hit the lumber yard - and you return, all for one hourly rate that covers gas, insurance and unlimited miles. All you pay for is the drive. ”
They say it’s better for the environment, but I don’t really see how, per se. You’re still driving and you’re not carpooling. I guess the idea is that if you have this service, you would get rid of your car and therefore have more incentive to use public transportation. Sure, why not? Also, “Flexcar uses ultra-low emissions vehicles and hybrids; in fact, we have the largest private fleet of hybrid vehicles in the USA. ”
Here is a link to their web site
Sadly, like most cool, greenie things, this is not available in New England.
From Grist Magazine
“Aw, Shucks: Ethanol ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, new study says”
…but like I said, a little variety never hurt anyone.
Personally, I’m a fan of multiple options in general, and especially for powering automobiles. Just like with food, I believe in moderation with the use of any resource. Even if it makes a new infrastructure more difficult to implement, we won’t get fully out of the pickle we’re in, unless we have some diversity in the way we power our cars–and anything else for that matter.
Just about anything can become a commodity. It’s like anything people collect. An item has value if people want it. Your baseball card collection now sitting gathering dust is an example. You just can’t sell one now and make the money you could have 5 or 10 years ago. There isn’t the same demand.
So, let’s say we all decide that ethanol is the way to go. That’s super duper fabulous for the greenies out there because it is good for the environment. But, say every car in America begins to run on ethanol. What is to stop ethanol from becoming overburdened like oil? Sure, you can just simply grow more corn BUT now the question becomes where.
Here’s a little factoid I gleaned from CNN. (yes, they provide an innordinate amount of my content). If 100% of the cars on the road today were to run solely on ethanol, we would need to use 97% of the land in the 48 contiguous states to grow the corn. And there you have it. A new commodity, land to grow corn. When we start running out of land to grow corn, we’ll start making deals with other countries for that, instead of oil.
Unless we have choice, we’re going to run into the same problem we have now, but simply with a different technology. Choice is power…. and thus, I am writing this from a Mac–which is a choice other than Microsoft, although, in reality, it provides me with less choice for software.
If only they would standardize a bit, but anyway, here is a link to a short list of ways to find out about recycling in your area.
And some other good links for you…
The Internet Consumer Recycling Guide
Earth 911– no, I don’t know why they call it that.
From Chrysler and Mercedes Benz–a new concept car… and I don’t even like fish.
So, I haven’t exactly been fighting the big fight very long, or even at all, but I have been a greenie for longer than you think. I was a greenie BEFORE the internets (yes, both of them) and I have the “How Kids Can Save The Earth” book to prove it.
Now that I have harnessed the power of said internets, I am pretty happy to give this blog a green slant, even if it comes primarily from CNN–for now. Here is an interesting article, which I hope is remotely accurate.
It’s time!
Be green - everybody’s doing it (from this article, I would classify myself as guiltily ashamed but not a sandal-ista.)
My greenie center is oozing… with more eviro-tastic excitement.
Sora, through indirect means, passed on this little tid bit to me. It is a company called EV Rental Cars and they are “The Nation’s Only Environmental Rental Car Company” (the capitalizing is totally wrong grammatically, but I will let it slide).
Here is a link to their web site.
Sadly, and I am crying a bit about it right now, they are located only in the west. Damn them. Hopefully the idea will catch on over in these parts. I have always wanted to try a hybrid. Cali is always ahead of the game environmentally.
On a related note, I think it has been a common belief of some rather superficially aware environmentalists that making money is perhaps at odds with the virtues of environmentalism. I don’t think it is really at odds with those virtues, just at times with the practicallity of it. You need money to do much of anything on a large scale, even good things, even altruistc things. That’s just how it works. Products don’t just recycle themselves… well, except for food. Food turns to poo, which turns to manure, which turns into that tomato you are eating. But anyway… back to non poo related materials.
Right now, the money is on the side of the greenies and that is a good thing. All we can do, like any other movement, is get as much money, and sustainable and profitable ideas as we can, before the populus at large gets distracted by some other shiny object.
Thank you very much to Sora for finding this article for me on some good, old-fashioned Trashonomics.
“Making plant food from worm poop and packaging it in reused bottles, Tom Szaky created a truly beautiful business model. ”
“Worms, after all, do not charge for their labor, never take a day off, produce their body weight in waste every 24 hours, and–since they copulate while they eat–double their numbers every three months. They are also content to dine on stuff that might otherwise go into landfills. ”
And, of course, it has the word poop in it.
Not that I like spending close to $200 or more per month on gas, but I am glad it has sparked some serious rethinking…
Colleges go green
FIFA World Cup and Green Goal
