Conservation: the next big thing!

From time to time, when people talk about the oil crisis we face, and the need for a viable alternative energy resource, the idea is put forth that all we have to do is go at it as we did putting a man on the moon. We did that in less than a decade, so why not this?

Here’s why not: There aren’t too many blank spots left on the periodic table of the elements. We’ve found all the obvious stuff here on earth, and these days, if some scientist does manage to find something new to add, it’s invariably something like “garbanzobeanium” and it’s really rare. There’s simply nothing left to discover around here that will do all for us that oil has done for us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t all work together to solve the problem. There is a solution, you just won’t like it. Oh, and the US space program is pretty much wrapped up, too. Time to move on.

I must have been out the day “conservation” became a dirty word in America. It became un-American, and maybe just a little bit pink-o. Too bad, ‘cause that’s what’s gonna save us. The big “Moon Landing/Manhattan Project” response to the oil crisis is for us to go after conservation like there’s no tomorrow. Because if we don’t, there isn’t.

Since we do so very little conservation here in America right now, this is a wide open field of possibilities. We are such energy pigs. Where to begin? At home, we need to set goals for energy and resource consumption. What if we said everyone had to limit their home energy use to 5 kwh a day and 750 gallons of water a month, per person? First off, you’d have to figure out how much you are using now to see how little that is. But could you do it? Could you use that little? That ain’t much, but it’s also what the Lovely JoAnn and I use together in our house, so it can be done. I dare you to even take the time to figure out what you use at home, either per person or in total. You will be amazed.

We drive about 10,000 miles a year, and yes, we could reduce that, if and when we have to. We are not extravagant drivers, and again, that figure is for both of us together - about 5,000 miles per person per year. Put like that, it ain’t so bad. But what about you? There’s no doubt that the oil crisis will hit our driving habits hard - and first. How much could you conserve there? Time to start looking.

Of course, for any national conservation effort to work, the public has to be given a very good reason to make the sacrifice. It has to be a sort of Patriotic War Effort thing, and there are far too few people left around here who remember the last one. Still, we did it then, and we can do it again - if we are shown that we have to. I’ve always said that Americans are lousy about planning ahead, but great when it comes to responding to a crisis. And this will be all that.

So maybe now’s the time to buck the trend and look at your life in terms of future conservation potential. How much could you save, how much less would you need to use, if you absolutely had to? Eventually you will, National Conservation Effort or not. Conservation needs to be our next Big Thing.

Remember "Fifty-Five Saves Lives"?

That three-syllable word, those three little syllables, are being whispered again in the hallways and conference rooms in Washington, D. C. They are being mentioned in hushed tones with a knowing nod, a wink and a finger aside the nose. They are thinking about it out loud, but you haven’t heard them say them yet. You will. Just three little syllables:

“Fifty-five”.

Do you remember? Are you old enough to recall? It was the 1970s, an era of disco, big hair and Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer what done good despite his brother Billy. To conserve energy, to conserve oil, the national speed limit was dropped to fifty-five. States that did not comply faced losing federal highways funds. So we all drove fifty-five. Or at least we pretended to when anyone was looking.

I remember driving the ninety miles or so out to Disney World under the new speed limit. Over sixty miles of the trip is done on I-4; a road where, no matter how fast you go, someone will pass you. Taken at fifty-five, the ride was leisurely and bucolic. Very relaxing. I have to say that even then, as young and wild and free as I was, I did enjoy the laid back pace of fifty-five. I was also driving a ’72 VW Bug, but it was capable of going faster. Ah, fifty-five. Homer Simpson said it best: “Sure, it will save some lives, but millions will be late.” My 1981 Yamaha SR500 motorcycle still sports the speedometer style of the era: “55” is highlighted in red, and the thing only reads to 85, despite the machine being capable of much more. That was the trend of the day.

Will we be returning to those lethargic drives of yesteryear? If we do, I hope we do it right this time. Sure, fifty-five saved fuel out on the open road, but we don’t drive on the open road all the time. What about the lesser roads? What about around town? If we do go back to a reduced speed limit (and I do believe we will eventually), I suggest we make a sweep of it; that is, yes, lower the national rural speed limit to fifty-five, but then get in there and finish the job: Lower every road’s speed limit by at least five miles an hour. If you’re going to save, by golly, then save.

It will be interesting to see if we do go back to the lowered speed limit. Right now, the political timing is off. That’s not something you do unless you absolutely have to — if you want to be re-elected. For the U.S. to drop its speed limits again, there will have to be a crisis worthy of the effort again. In the 70’s, it was the Arab Oil Embargo. And now? Will peak oil, or a sudden cutoff of our oil supplies for whatever the reason be enough to get us to slow down? I see no way that Americans would accept it simply because it made good sense. We have to have a pressing reason to make sense. Hopefully with the usual attached media circus.

Lake Avenue runs north-south along the west side of our house. It gets about 4,000 cars a day, and it seems like most of them are traveling well in excess of the road’s 30 mph speed limit. Mister President, if you read this, you can start right there with that lowered speed limit thing. Any time. Please.

I can drive fifty-five.

Kill your car?!

Well, maybe not quite yet. ABC Radio National host Robyn Williams posed the question the other day: “(Is this) the beginning of the end for cars?” Good question, Robyn. With gas prices going for all-time highs here in the U.S. this summer, I suspect more and more people might be waking up and taking a much harder look at that big hulking hunk of steel in their garage. But are the car’s days truly numbered?

Right around the turn of the the last century (1900), the automobile was still an experimental rich man’s toy. (And yeah, a toy for experimental rich men.) They were expensive and weird and uncommon until after World War One, and before that, seeing one was An Event. By the time we got through World War Two, the automobile was as much a part of the American Scene as Americans themselves. We became, in every way, a Car Culture. And we still are. But will that - could that - come to an end? Maybe later.

With the subject of this blog and my book being peak oil, we have to consider the possibility. Well, I do. You can go watch Hamster Dance again if you want. (I love those little fuzzballs!) Ok, focus… cars… oil. Oh, yeah. So here’s the deal: Yes, the car is in a tough spot right now. Gas is pricey, and quite likely to get more so, and most unlikely to get cheap any time soon. Like, ever again. I’ve long said that the private automobile is not the highest, best use for oil, and I still know that to be true. But there are far worse things we do with oil. There are definitely a few other things that should fall by the wayside first.

Let’s start with the entire commercial airline industry. If the average airliner holds 200 passengers, how many of them really had to make that trip by plane? How many of them really had to get there that fast? I’m guessing pretty much none of them. The airline industry is this coal mine’s canary when it comes to oil. They will be about the first big industry to die. If you hold any airline stock, last year would be a good time to sell it.

Then there’s the cruise industry. At least the airlines go some place. Cruise ships just go out and come back. Sure, they’re fun and exotic and fattening, a great combination, but geez, Louise - look at all the oil going out that smokestack! How long can they keep that up? And wouldn’t a sailing ship make more sense? (And be way cooler?) Yo-ho.

When it comes to just going out and back, private aircraft are often little more than oil-burning ego trips. Literally. More often than not, a private plane takes off and lands at the same airport. They go up, they fly around for a bit, they come back, and they didn’t do a darned thing but burn fuel the whole time. Yeah, that was a great use of oil. Go team.

When I moved to Florida in 1969, the causeways were lined with Hobie Cat sailboats. They were (and still are) the very definition of cool on water to me. Hobie Adler is a genius, and you can tell him I said so if you see him. The thing is, those cats take some skill to sail. Done right, they are fast and a thing of beauty in motion. Done wrong, and they are upside down, (but easily righted). You don’t see too many Hobie Cats out there these days, and I honestly believe that is our loss.

Now it’s all about jet skis, and they suck. Well, they both suck and blow. They suck down oil and gas, and they blow out nasty fumes. And they go nowhere. Where the folks with the Hobies would get out there and go places, the jet skis mostly do circles about 100 yards offshore and that’s it. Whadda waste. I missed seeing the colorful sails and the flying hulls. But it gets worse.

Leaf blowers. There, I said it. The absolute worst possible use for our precious remaining oil resources are the legions of idiotic, noisy gas-powered leaf blowers that rack and ruin the gentle ambiance of every suburban neighborhood every freaking weekend. And I don’t just say that because I like to take afternoon naps. (Well, ok, I sort of do.) Still, leaf blowers are an insane waste of energy. They do nothing; they just blow stuff around. Stuff you should maybe have raked up instead. Duh. I will be so glad when they are gone. Party at my place. Seriously.

Ah, but the car? (Remember? The car?) Well, there’s a good chance all of this other stuff will fall by the wayside long before you see your last car drive by. What began as a rich man’s toy more than a hundred years ago, will go back to being a rich man’s toy in the next hundred years. The automobile’s general, everyday use will drop, and people will adapt and find other ways to get around - or stay home - but the car will be with us, in some fashion, for quite some time, I suspect. And I’m ok with that.

That means I might still, some day, own an Avanti. Cool.

A Test Drive: Nissan Leaf

Busy Saturday last weekend. The Lovely JoAnn and I went over to Tampa to check out the all new, all-electric Nissan Leaf car. We got to the International Plaza (mall), and found that Nissan had carved out a chunk of the mall’s north parking lot for their little one-car car show. But they did bring more than one car.

We got signed in and then our little group of eight or so were routed through several temporary glass buildings as our guide told us all about the brand new Leaf and Nissan’s long history of electric cars. (Who knew?) They had photos of all of their previous prototypes, going back for decades. JoAnn and I both decided we liked their first one best - it looked like a funky milk truck. Very cool. They had a Leaf chassis on display, showing all of the batteries that were on board the Leaf. There were many, many batteries.

After that, we got to walk around a functional Leaf. It was pretty much a typical small car from Japan. Which is to say: everything looked good, everything fit, and it had that new car smell. Love that new car smell! Our guide told us that because the Leaf is so quiet, it has a loudspeaker out in front of the left front wheel that puts out noise when the car is going under 18 mph so it doesn’t sneak up on people. The motor itself had some fake engine casings around it so it looks more like a typical transverse four-cylinder engine that you are used to seeing in cars like this. I thought that was funny, but I understood their logic. Then we got to drive it. Well, I got to drive it. JoAnn rode in the back and a brave Nissan rep rode shotgun. Hello, pedal - meet metal.

I had heard that electric cars have plenty of low end torque and will surprise you. Yep, roger that. Maybe it’s the lack of any revving motor roar, or maybe it’s the one continuous whoosh of the direct drive, but let me tell you: You step on the go pedal (I can’t really call it a gas pedal, now can I?), and buddy-boy, this car goes right now. No stumble, no hesitation off idle, nothing but go. It also handles like a go cart. You have my word on that.

Nissan says the Leaf will go about 100 miles on a full charge, and will do 90 miles an hour. How long it takes to recharge depends on available charging voltage. Standard 110v house current will charge it, but you need to give it time. Like overnight. Add a 220v charging station to your house and you cut the charging time in half. I suspect most folks will go for that option.

We were told Nissan estimated the average annual cost of charging the Leaf at $560 per year. Of course that depends on the price of electricity where you live, but they had the facts and figures to show that it would be cheaper to charge the Leaf at home than buy the amount of gasoline it would need instead. And yeah, we do spend more that $560 a year for gasoline.

Now here’s where it got all funny: As we walked into their fenced-off area in the parking lot, we saw a brand new Trek Belleville bicycle sitting there, on display in their area. To me, the Belleville is one of the best thought out bikes in the world. If I were to design my own bike from the ground up, I’d be hard pressed to do better than that one. It’s a very cool bike named after a very cool bicycle movie (The Triplets of Belleville). But why was it there?

As it turns out, if you take the tour and drive the Leaf, which I did, you could make a 30-second video about the Leaf, and if your video gets the most votes of all the videos made at that test drive location (Tampa), you win the bike! Wow! So here’s the deal: Vote for me just as though I need another bike. I think if you get the most votes of all the videos in the US, you get a car or something, but hey, I just want the bike!

Here’s the video. (Don't click on the picture of me, but do click on the link below it)

https://www.drivenissanleaf.com/Win/Vote.aspx?b=9RC7AAWZF6FM

If nothing else, this will give you a chance to see what I look like and sound like. Which is to say, nothing at all like Richard Castle. Vote for Uncle Chippie!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles - Peak Travel

Eric Morris, in his “Peak Travel?” article in the January 11, 2011 New York Times, has pointed out that we madcap, drive-crazy Americans are now actually driving less, and have been since 2005. From the end of WWII to about the year 2000, it was all about driving more and going further each year. These days, not so much. Now we go less. Is this a peak oil thing? Maybe sort of, but not exactly.

While it is true that we tend to drive less as gas gets more expensive, the massive tide of internet shopping has also served to cut down the annual miles driven. Oddly enough, Eric was only looking at miles driven. I would like to have seen some mention of miles flown, and of miles traveled by train. And I would have liked to have seen flying miles drop as rail miles rose - but I can’t say that is happening. I didn’t see it. But maybe we really are traveling less.

In the comments after Mr. Morris’s article, one poster (“Drill-Baby-Drill drill Team”) pointed out that the grand iconic classic of all road trips, the one where Joseph took Mary back home from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to comply with that pesky Roman census thing, was a trip of only eight miles. And my lovely wife points out that there is no mention in the Bible of a donkey being involved, making it rather likely that Mary walked.

The point to be made here is that at one time, a trip of eight miles was a very, very big deal, indeed. A trip of, quite literally, Biblical proportions. These days, it’s lunch. I figure I could walk eight miles in a little less than three hours, as I tend to saunter along at a blistering three-mph clip. Those same eight miles would take less than an hour on my bicycle, and about 15 minutes in the truck, depending on the lights. But what if we go back to bikes and donkeys and feet?

Considering the viability of mass transit in America, the foot-and-bike option seems likely as the oil gets scarce. Author James H. Kunstler (www.kunstler.com) has famously said America has a rail system that would be an embarrassment to Bulgaria — and he was being polite. We essentially have no passenger rail system to speak of for the vast bulk of America. You wanna get there? Then you wanna drive.

I live in Clearwater, Florida, right across the bay from Tampa and just north of St. Petersburg. Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, Clearwater, 22 other cities and almost one million people packed tightly into just 280 square miles, has no passenger rail service at all. No light rail, no Amtrak service, no Disney-inspired monorail, nothing. We have some buses, but even they don’t go to all corners of the county. There are two buses that go to Tampa, but only on weekdays. Oh, we do have a Greyhound Bus Station over on the other side of the mall. Maybe. I honestly haven’t thought to even look to see if it’s still there, now that I think about it. We are, after all a nation of drivers, even if we are driving less.

And what if we are driving less? That’s a good thing. I expect we’ll see more of that, or less, I guess. I’m hoping as we all drive less we’ll see more of what was right there all around us all along. We will live locally, and we will (finally) know where we live. We will become neighbors. I like that. Do you?