Put on your walking shoes, get out your change

"I think a trading range between $80 and $120 a barrel this year is about right, but with the softness of the dollar, and the occasional interruptions that you have because of politics, I think we could see $120 oil.''  So says Peter Barker-Homek, head of the Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. in an interview with Bloomberg.com.(Bloomberg)

Wouldn't you know it, right after I started this post, in pops an article from the Seattle Times which begins

 

OPEC said today it will not put more oil on the global market despite record-high prices for crude, blaming the U.S. for economic "mismanagement" that it said was having a worldwide effect.

 

Oil soared past $104 for the first time after the OPEC announcement and the release of a government report showing a surprise drop in crude-oil stockpiles.

 

Light, sweet crude for April delivery jumped $5 to settle at a record $104.52 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier rising to $104.64, a new trading record. Earlier this week, oil prices broke the previous inflation-adjusted price record of $103.76, set in 1980 during the Iran hostage crisis.

 

The U.S. dollar sunk to record lows today, with the euro fetching $1.53 for the first time ever in Europe.

So. let's see. The $100.00 per barrel oil we're seeing right now gives us a gas price at the pump of about $3.60 per gallon in my area. An increase of 20% would push it to about $4.32 per gallon at the pump. That's a pretty big jump.

It wasn't actually that many years ago I could fill my tank for about a buck a gallon. It cost me about $20.00 if the tank was nearly empty.  If gas jumps to $4.32 per gallon that same tank will cost me $86.40. For one tank!  Not that I am complaining mind you. I never complain about the price of gas because every dollar bump in the price is another "tax" imposed on frivolous driving and Hummers.  Take that Frieda! 

Eighty-six bucks will almost buy me a decent pair of boots or walking shoes unless I want some really nice ones then that might set me back two tankful's. I've never really personally kept track, but a good pair of hiking boots will probably get me a couple thousand miles or so before the Yellow Plug Vibrams wear out.  (I base this on the experience of those who have through-hiked the Appalachian Trail, which is 2200 miles long. A fresh pair of good boots usually wears out about the end of that hike. Cheap boots are a different story. Moral: Don't buy cheap boots. They're expensive.)

So let us say I spend $134.95 on my boots; Rocky Boots has a nice pair for that amount; and I walk two thousand-two-hundred miles in them. That equates to about six cents per mile. My car gets about eighteen miles to the gallon so if I multiply the per mile cost of the boots by eighteen and that will equate the cost of my boot soles to the price of fuel. Are you still with me here? The end result is this. One gallon of fuel will carry me eighteen miles for $4.32 (projected). The boot soles will cost me about $1.10 to travel the same distance, albeit much slower. (Hey, I figure if Frieda can liken light rail to freight trains, well I can pull a little latitude between boots and gas.) 

But wait, I can get a Tri-Met bus pass for just $76.00 and go anywhere I want in the entire Portland Metro area all month for less than the cost of just one tankful of gas. I even get there much quicker than I do with my boots. Although you still might consider wearing shoes when you get off the bus. It's just the polite thing to do unless you're at Collins Beach or something.  So anyhow back to the math.  If you travel 2200 miles on a bus in one month (could happen but probably not) it ends up costing  you only about three and half cents per mile.  So multiply that out by the eighteen mpg of my car and it costs only sixty cents to travel the same distance as my $4.32 did in the car.  A savings of about $3.72 cents.  

Ok, I know the math is a bit fuzzy and questionable but the point I make is this. Gas is no longer cheap, it probably won't be ever cheap again. That means a frivolous trip is no longer frivolous, it's downright expensive.  So, why not walk, or ride the bus, or take the train, or just play at the park instead of having to park.  If you can't bring yourself to do that to stay green, why not do it to save some green. It just adds up.  Oh, and Frieda, no offense...I was just having a little fun. Enjoy your Hummer. There may be more room on the road for you real soon.

Cars, cars and more cars

In the U.S. there are 239 million cars and light trucks on the road. All these vehicles log roughly 2.7 trillion miles every year. That is a 160% increase in miles driven just since 1970 and the amount increases every year. It costs all of us, in the form of taxes, 66.3 billion dollars every year to build and maintain the roadways for all these cars. Public transit sees about one-tenth that amount of funding and Amtrak sees even much less than that.

In the U.S. we account for just 5% of the worlds population, yet we contribute 45% of the global pollution from vehicles. Some states, like California, have decided to get tough on this pollution, but only fifteen other states have decided to follow their lead. The rest have lax, or no standards at all. And here is something that may actually surprise you. The big three automakers, GM, Ford and Chrysler, have actually called for a cap on global warming emissions yet, despite their call for a cap, there have been no federal bills passed to cap, or even reduce, pollution from ANY source. Hmmm...

Source: The Environmental Defense Fund

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Spread the word! September 22 is "World Car Free Day". "WORLD CAR-FREE DAY" started in the 70's and 80's in different forms but is now a regular planned event, and each year just gets bigger. "Car-Free Day 2007" may end up being the biggest yet. Even the government of China is planning official events in more than 100 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. They even plan to close some of their roads to private cars.

Our cities, towns and streets don't have to be dominated by cars. It was not long ago they weren't. We can convert our cities and streets into avenues for people-powered transportation once again, it just takes enough voices to make change. Cities can easily be traversed by foot, bike or,for longer distances, bus, light rail, subway or train.

Let's all make "Car Free" day a special event.

Note: Have a blog? Please cut and paste this text into your blog, including this note. Think viral!

Car Free Day is coming!-September 22

Spread the word! September 22 is "World Car Free Day".  "WORLD CAR-FREE DAY" started  in the 70's and 80's in different forms but is now a regular planned event, and each year just gets bigger. "Car-Free Day 2007" may end up being the biggest yet.  Even the government of China is planning official events in more than 100 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. They even plan to close some of their roads to private cars. 

Our cities, towns and streets don't have to be dominated by cars. It was not that long ago they weren't.  We can convert our cities and streets again into avenues for people-powered transportation, it just takes enough voices to make change. Cities can easily be traversed by foot, bike or,for longer distances, bus, light rail, subway or train. 

Let's all make "Car Free" day a special event. 

Note: Have a blog?  Please cut and paste this text into your blog, including this note. Think viral!

Eating Local

Here is an excellent video that clearly spells out the need to eat local. Following the video is a link to find a CSA in your area. This link has every CSA and farmers market which belongs to "Local Harvest" but there may be other small CSA's or markets in your area as well that are not members. Your community may have a CSA organization that has a list of more.

LOCAL HARVEST

Eating locally for me is one of the biggest challenges I face and is is going to require a major shift in the way my life is organized. That is coming soon. I was once a member of a CSA but they only delivered produce in the summer and I wasn't fully satisfied with the produce they provided. Very little variety and not as fresh as I would have expected. But when I get settled in my new place I may give this a try again. Suggestions are always welcome.

$100.00 per barrel oil is coming!

In my hiatus while I pack and move I thought I would throw on a few interesting articles. This one is about the impending jump in the price of a barrel of oil. It is my feeling that the article is correct but may be a little premature. The price of oil is somewhat politically driven, so my feeling is the price will jump dramatically only after November 2008. In the meantime the price we see at the pump will be kept lower than it normally would be. This will be an interesting thing to watch. Remember, the price of nearly everything you buy is affected by the price of oil. I have put a little ticker over to the left side of the blog and near the bottom that shows the current price of gas. You can type in your two-digit state or just watch it tick through all fifty.

On a personal note, I found a place to move that is on the bus lines and walking distance from the grocery we frequent as well as the library. The light rail too is just five minutes away. Very convenient location. This will allow me to park my car except for the most urgent of trips. I hope to reduce my driving to less than one tank per month or less. This would be about one-fifth the fuel I used to consume. I'm getting there.

The house has very little room for a garden (schucks) but I see this move as one more step toward my goal of being off the grid and self sufficient. It is a rental and will afford me the time to find the right piece of property to build least footprint and put in a garden and most likely a greenhouse.

Well, here is the link to that article.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

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Vacation

Well, our vacation is finally here. And this year it is going to be much more relaxing and slower paced. And that is not just because I am getting old. I can still keep up with the young guys. I just don't want to anymore.

Our normal vacation usually begins with a long list of things to pack, followed by days of packing, repacking, adding and eliminating, then finally bundling it all up, putting it by the front door, rechecking to make sure we have everything, worry a little that we forgot something, and then on the day before leaving retire to bed late for the long travel day ahead.

The morning we leave,in order to avoid the exorbitant parking fees at the airport, we usually drag all of our stuff to the corner and wait for a bus. The bus then takes us to the light rail, which takes us to the airport where we ride the escalator, walk down a super long corridor,find a check-in line, check the bags and then deliver them to a gruff TSA person who sizes up whether our bags should get the mini-nuke treatment or the full service. We then wander off to wait, have our socks sniffed and our carrion checked by the vultures at the security checkpoint and if we are lucky we won't have to strip to our altogether in the little booth while the dentist wannabe checks our cavities. (I've been lucky so far and have only had the mini-nuke treatment and never the full service.)

Once through security we relax a bit and would not even consider leaving back to the real world again. The airport people make this easy since the corridors are lined with shops and restaurants galore. They are all overpriced and lousy but hey, what else is there to do except watch a bunch of tired people. I think it is important to mention here that to have a proper vacation one must first suffer. This is the reason vacation sentences must be served a long way from home. The further the better.

Watching people at the airport gets boring fast because no one is really themselves. If you act normal at an airport you might draw the attention of someone important and then you would need to explain why you stopped looking at your carrion for a few seconds and answer questions about people you don't know. This is why we usually make the cursory wander through the magazine shop to pick up the latest copy of AdBusters and then settle into a seat at the gate and quietly wait, peering above the magazine from time to time and take sucks off our $2.99 bottle of water. When the plane arrives we watch all the people get off to see if they are still breathing or look particularly nauseous. I also try to check out the flight crew to see if they actually look old enough to fly, or conversely...are they over the hill and should I bone up on my CPR skills.

Anyhow, we always buy the cheap tickets so we end up watching everyone else get on before us. When we are finally able to shuffle down the jetway, we try to smile innocently at the flight attendant who is smiling back but really just wondering if we have any contraband shampoo or creme rinse in our carrion. We slide down the aisle to find our seats and hope this time we are not next to someone with flatulence or wearing cheap perfume. We fit ourselves into our seats, properly stow our knees under our chins and then triple check to make sure the tray table is in the upright position. We don't want problems with he flight attendant. We must rely on her for the next few hours for our food and drink. Then we watch the flight attendant give a five minute speech on the proper clicking of seat belts, how to breath through a tube should one side or the other of the plane disappear at 35,000 feet and the proper method of flotation on a seat cushion. I believe you are supposed to throw your arms over the top and look skyward. Have you ever heard of a person being rescued in a plane crash that was floating on their seat cushion in some lake somewhere? We feign attention to the speech but since it is a rerun, we just get out our neck pillows and brace ourselves firmly in the reading position for the long three hours of sitting perfectly still while holding out hope our legs don't thrombose before the plane touches down. I don't want some doc on vacation removing a clot from my leg with a ball point pen at 35,000 feet, do you? I didn't think so. This is fun!

After reaching our destination, the process works exactly in reverse with the exception that the TSA vultures no longer consider us dead meat and pretty much ignore us unless we running through the airport talking about how great the jihad convention was. Once we finally arrive at our room, we flip on the TV and fall asleep weary from the first long day of our vacation. Tomorrow we attack our vacation with all we have left.

I think I have pretty much had it with that type of vacation. This year we are vacationing much closer to home and using our own vehicle. No stress, just a leisurely drive east of the mountains where we can hide from the rain, do a little walking, ride a horse, raft a river,get some rest, read a few books and probably watch a few videos. Carbon footprint for this vacation, about 20 gallons of gas and the same amount of electricity we would use at home. Expenditure for the jet vacation. TONS of fuel. Literally! There is also rumor that jets flying in the upper atmosphere are having an egg beater effect and affecting weather patterns. Who knows what the outcome of that is.

Anyway, I won't be writing any posts over the next week or so, but I don't think too many people are reading my blog yet anyhow. As soon as I can figure out a good hook like "No Impact Man" who has given up toilet paper I should garner a lot more attention. Until then, I am happy just to write to myself and pretend.

Long Time

Well, it has indeed been a long time since I have posted. What a backslider I have become. Shame on me. First it was work then it was other excuses. None of them good. I sort of forgot about weighing my mail and all too. I do seem to be getting just as much as before though. Even though I have called tons of mailers and told them to turn it off. They don't turn it off even when you ask them. I think the system is on auto-pilot and is out of their control. I even posted my name and address with the Direct Mail Marketing Association and paid my few bucks to get off the list. Didn't help yet. I'm still hauling tubs of the stuff to the recycle. The odd thing is that a good percentage of the junk mail are pleas to "help save the earth, animals, air, water, trees, mountains, valleys, people.... Kind of defeating the purpose if you ask me. Why don't they get out in the streets and beg for money if they really want to save the earth. Or how about hauling people out to the woods en masse, and let them see what the beauty of nature is really like...then hit them up for the money to save it. I guess that would use a little fuel at first but it might get people to thinking more than a piece of junk mail printed with soy ink.

I am happy to report though that my automobile fuel bill is still declining rapidly and is now only about 2/3 of what it was before. My goal is to eventually only use flex and rental cars but the wife has not reached my level of fanaticism yet so... This month brings a small vacation though so it will go up a little, but we are staying close to home and not flying so the actual amount of fuel used will be considerably less than other vacations months when you eliminate the jet fuel we would have consumed. We are also committed to making this a relaxing vacation and not drive all over kingdom come to "have fun" like we normally do. I do love a road trip and usually log thousands of miles. Not this time. Only about 400 total for the whole trip, including side ventures. Even the rafting trip we have planned is via bus and the car will just stay parked. I have also mapped out some of the things we want to see and plan to group them together by locale. Most of all I am looking forward to the sun. Bring it on.

I have just started a wonderful book called "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. It is the true story of how they moved from the deserts of New Mexico with it's water that would kill goldfish to live as close to the land as they could. She talks about raising animals for food which does not fit my plant-based lifestyle but any move away from factory farming is a plus. Ultimately my desire is to do much the same without raising livestock. However living in Oregon I don't have to move far to accomplish it. Just need a little more space to put out some small raised gardens. Maybe a small glass enclosure or two for a winter garden.
Well, I hope to get back to posting every day. I haven't given up on my efforts. Have gotten a few dirty looks at the grocery store when I used my cloth produce bags, rather than the see-through plastic bags. Really, is it that much more work to open the bag and look inside? Oh well, I still plan to use them. It has really drastically reduced the amount of plastic I haul to the recycle.

I have been keeping close tabs on the "No Impact Man" project and Colin is now facing many of the grey conundrums that appear whenever you try to reduce your impact in this modern world. It is simply impossible to move to a no impact life in a mid town apartment. The biggest being refrigeration and, when winter returns, heat. Most likely if the temperature hits 100 degrees in August they will be driven from their air-conditionless walk up. We humans are a bit like lizards and need just the right temperature to survive. Other societies that live closer to nature do not insist on living in tight gypsum boxes and therefore don't need to worry about this. We as Americans have our codes and rules that drive us away from each other and into our cubicles. Wait, isn't that the first terror in nearly every sci-fi novel? The isolation?

Perhaps when the last drop of oil runs through the veins of our modern world we all finally all look at each other and look for the natural solutions rather than the technical. It is probably wise to learn now how to live without modernity and pass it on through the generations. Hmm...

If anybody is listening, I wish you well.

Scott