We ARE driving less

Hallelujah - we're driving less. 9.6 BILLION miles less.  How quickly we were actually able to change after all the pissing and moaning about how we can't possibly change. Imagine that - when push comes to shove, it IS possible to get out the car. 

Of course, we'll have to see what shakes in December or January, when its 5 degrees out.

Traffic Deaths Decline as Gas Prices Rise

Well, I guess it's a fact now. People actually ARE slowing down to save gas; and in the process, they're killing each other less frequently. Hooray!

Roma children are still children

I'm not sure how much you've heard about the Roma/gypsy issue in Italy, but this recent story caught my eye.  Photos taken of the bodies of two girls, drowning victims, lying on the beach under towels with just their feet sticking out - and in the background, people are sunbathing. Just hanging out on the beach like nothing had happened (the girls were laid out for an hour).  The accompanying story depicts how beach goers continued with their sunbathing, swimming, and picnicking as the coroner lifted the two girls' bodies into coffins and carried them off the beach.  

Could you each lunch as you watch a medical examiner put the bodies of children into coffins?  I don't care what race they are, whether they are legal or illegal immigrants - they are human children.  Human children who had hopes & dreams; children who had parents, siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews and grandparents.

I'd like to think that if I was on a beach where any child died, I'd have the decency to at least lose my appetite.  Leave, cry, whatever - but not sit there and eat my lunch as I watched. How could someone do that?  How could someone HUMAN do that and not be physically ill?

They only way anyone could do that is if they didn't value human life. Racists would do that.  Was World War II so long ago that we still cannot see the dehumanizing of life when it happens right before our eyes?  The Roma people were sent to Dachau (if not shot on sight); their women have been sterilized by governments against their will as recently as 1977; they have been enslaved and subject to ethnic cleansing throughout history.  Just this past May, Roma camps were attacked and set on fire by residents of Naples, Italy.  

The dehumanization of a group of people is the first step in extermination. We've seen this play out over and over again - it's one of the oldest tricks in the book.  Sadly, I fear that because it is happening in Italy, which is not located in the middle east, or in Africa, we'll just sit and watch it ramp up until genocide once again rears its ugly head. 

In America, we have our own issues with illegal immigration. It's a big issue, and we can't agree on how to solve it. But I do at least hope that if immigrant children drowned in front of some of our citizens, we don't just shrug and go on eating our lunch. Maybe that's misguided... our nation was formed on the back of slavery, and we continue to have major race relation issues. Not long ago, we put our own Japanese Americans in concentration camps - well within the lifetimes of those still living.   But I'll continue to hope that we can keep a clear line between political issues and the value of human life. 

Once we start classifying groups of people as "them", "they" or "those people" giant red signal flares should go off in our heads.  Step one: dehumanize them.  Step two: extermination.   

I'm sure there were at least a few people on that beach that were horrified - I'm guessing they left before the photographer took his photograph. For all I know, those who were enjoying the sun amidst that horror could have been American tourists, hell bent on getting that perfect vacation they paid good money for. Regardless, I hope the people who were crass enough to enjoy their beach time will someday learn a little bit about compassion and human dignity.  I'd like to think they'd be shamed into it after seeing their photograph plastered in newspapers throughout the world. But I doubt it.

Things are heating up...

quite literally. Just came across this posting in the Boston Globe.  June was the 8th hottest month on record (records began in 1880) & globally the January - June 2008 period was the 9th warmest on record.

Our average temperature in June was 2.3 degrees above the 30-year average.  So far this month, we are averaging 1.7 degrees above normal - which is including the current heat wave that begins today (it's 90 degrees out right now where I am).  

So we've been told by the folks in the global warming camp that because of positive feedback mechanisms in the atmosphere & ocean, warming would like be accelerate quickly. I do wonder if this is the beginning of that rapid acceleration.  Maybe it's just one of those freak temperature fluctuations. Although I did read recently that the Russian arctic science lab had to be evacuated on an emergency basis recently (last week?) because the ice floe they were on had shrunk from a 3 km by 5 km chunk of ice to a 300 meter by 600 meter chunk of ice and couldn't continue to support the scientists and their research any longer. They were supposed to be there a year, but had to leave after 10 months. The sea ice is now half as thick as it used to be, and is melting much faster than expected. Because open ocean is darker than sea ice, it absorbs the heat from the sun (ice reflects the heat), which in turn melts more ice, creating more water to absorb more heat.  Not only is this bad for temperatures, but this also means the salinity of the arctic ocean will decrease, which messes around with the density of the water near the arctic, which then stops the ocean currents that keeps europe temperate.  The chain reaction continues from there;  I suggest you go see Mr. Gore's movie - he explains it better than I do.

It's one thing to watch a movie. Its a completely different thing to watch the news and start putting two and two together.

Similarly, just think of how we were told by the peak oil people of the havoc that was just around the corner after oil peaked. Well, oil peaked last year. And what's going on now? Havoc, or the beginning of havoc.  The economy is seriously slowing down. The price of gas is above $4 a gallon in most places.  Food prices continue to climb because transportation costs of food have increased. And this is SUMMER.  We haven't gotten to the heating season yet, and local produce is in readily available (unless you live in the desert).  

I've always had a "worlds are colliding" fear when theories start playing out before my very eyes. It's hard for me to make that mental jump from an abstract idea in my head to watching it become reality. 

National Speed Limit

I'm not the only one, apparently, who thinks that slowing down Americas highways might make solid sense. Republican Senator John Warner from Virginia has sent a letter to the Energy Secretary Bodman asking him to evaluate what speed limit may provide optimum fuels savings given today's technology.

The reply from the Energy Departments Spokeswoman Angela Hill further illustrates how incredibly dumb our current administration is: "If Congress is serious about addressing gasoline prices, they must take action on expanding domestic oil and natural gas production."

That's just Bass-ackwards. Why conserve what we have? Let's just go drill for more, and we'll have it in 30 years, and then prices will go down THEN (you know, when our kids are our age). Special interests obviously have control of our government and we will continue to pay for it until the end of time.

Anyway, according to the department of Energy's website, the optimum average speed for fuel economy is about 60 MPH. They have a handy little graph on that page I've linked to. Every 5 MPH over 60 MPH will cost 7% to 23% more in fuel economy - or an "additional 29 to 94 cents per gallon". That's a pretty big range.

Here's the problem: for those of us who WANT to drive at the optimum fuel efficient speed, we can't on the highway. We'll get hit, run off the road, or pulled over by the police for going too slow. It amazes me. This is one reason I try to avoid driving on highways at all - it isn't really safe. I take the back roads, or the "blue roads" as I've heard them called (blue roads being secondary routes on paper maps - remember those?) as much as possible. I seem to get the best mileage around 45 MPH - the speed limit on the roads in my area. No wonder I'm getting 38 mpg in my civic where apparently other people aren't doing so hot (most user reported averages I've seen is in the 31 mpg range). It's easy once you start caring and paying attention.

The only problem is that no one cares (Ok - very few care) and we're all too lazy to get out of bed early enough so that we don't have to speed to avoid being late for work. There is nothing in the world that is important enough for me to be in a hurry.