I was thinking about this while lying under my
motorcycle doing the 6000 miles service.

Being green around the year 2000 meant driving a tiny hybrid Honda Insight with a "Save the whales" bumper sticker plastered between those funky rear fender skirts. These lone conservers were few and far between navigating a sea of SUV's, consuming 5 times the fuel, labeling them liberals.

I have never understood the label liberal because it's often applied to one who chooses to conserve resources (or reduces profit?); which would be conserve-ative..? It's one of those strange spins of economic-politics, like having a trade embargo with Communist Cuba for 40 years when Communist China has become our dominant trade partner and labor force.

The innovative minds of yesterday that invented (and capitalized on) modern convenience, today capitalize on those inventions and innovate new layers of surcharge and ownership, adding layers upon layers of costs to consumers.

Green today means more about marketing than solution. Under the complicated layers of production of products and energy delivery, consumers have realized that they need to take steps to simplify and extract value out of everything that empowers their existence, but are left with more green static than tools to fix problems.

Capitalism is this wonderful/horrible thing where opportunity seems unlimited yet the long-term prognosis screams metastasized cancer without a moral thread sewing the futures of consumers together.

CEOs have replaced feudal lords. It's questionable which leader has a greater motivation to support their underclass.

I ran across this interesting, ranting article from a South Africa paper, How hybrid cars cause hunger thetimes.co.za The hybrid part doesn't make sense, but the historical perspective is fascinating.

The author relates modern agribusiness selling food stock to the highest bidder (corn for ethanol) to the emergence of apartheid where black people were forcibly removed from fertile farming land, relocated to unproductive land and forced to work on big commercial farms as underpaid laborers..

Patel points out that in the 2000 years before the British arrived in India, famines occurred once every 120 years. After the British imposed the market on India's agricultural production, famines occurred every four years.

Despite the shortcomings of feudalism prior to the arrival of the British, India's landowners fed peasants when harvests were bad. For millennia, a moral economy prevailed, which ensured that nobody starved.

Posted in All posts from the start History Oil Machine/politics

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• Moving freight is five times more efficient using a train rather than a tractor trailer.
• Four miles of new railroad line can be built for the price of one mile of road.
• Electrically powered trains can use domestic fuel sources. A century ago, York had an extensive electric trolley/inter-urban system. York's street railway is a dream of tomorrow. (greenmesh 8/06)

Innovative minds looking for new revenue streams killed the railroads.

Consider all the jobs, wealth and competition that was created by our car centered, personal transport society. Cars, dealerships, parts, the insurance industry. Thousands of truck drivers, shipping companies and owner operators traversing the roads using diesel and services. All of this a major feed for the oil industry.

And it all worked as long as oil was cheap.

The once cheap oil that brought us a uniquely American car centered transportation culture is now strangling our economy and future success competing in a world market.

Pennsylvania is fortunate to have many short-line rail corridors still intact like the one along the Heritage Rail Trail and the Stewartstown Railroad waiting for innovative minds and clean technology to move large volumes of freight and people more efficiently.

Posted in All posts from the start Diesel Electric MPG Oil Machine/politics Public Transportation video

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I am starting to hear McCain scream for offshore drilling in my sleep. His cry sounds almost frenzied in a speech I listened to Monday. There are lot of other cries (and actions) that would could motivate us on to energy independence sooner.

The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage time.com

If the price of gasoline went down to $1.50 a gallon next week, suddenly all those useless full-sized SUV's sitting in used car lots depreciating would be in demand and spring to life - because we could now "afford" them.

It's animal/human nature to consume as much resources as you can, because you can take it.

We can drill and pump and, if it were possible, double output... and then we would consume our way back to the next price hike.

Eventually we will drill everywhere, however the daily cry for drilling doesn't offer me any peace now or for the future.

Drilling for more oil is just a dead end.

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It wasn't drilling or a windfall profit tax that has made the price of gasoline go down almost 30 cents in the past few weeks. U.S. fuel consumption was down 2.4 percent over the past four week a U.S. Energy Department report showed and during the heart of Summer driving season.

Sell, Sell, Sell ! I want to spark some fear in oil speculators.

The quickest way for someone who gets 15 mpg to cut the cost of their gas in half is to dump that vehicle and drive one that gets 30 mpg.

Posted in All posts from the start MPG Oil Machine/politics

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The Pennsylvania Turnpike is part of my American heritage. Rolling into a toll booth, I look at it as the gateway to a national treasure of transportation history.

I have a vested interest in supporting and preserving it, whether that just means not throwing trash at it or becoming actively involved when it's threatened.

When I am empowered, I go the extra mile to care about things and look to preserve this treasure and practical function of this roadway for future generations.

It's public, non-profit status gives me a say in it's future and ensures that my toll is actually going to the generational preservation and enjoyment of it. Not to financing a capital investment group; someone else's dream or worse a shady future deal that I am inadvertently supporting with my toll.

When an investment group is pushing very hard to enguage me in a public debate they view it as a sales pitch, but the true beauty of this moment is that I still have control of the power to guide the turnpike's destiny.

Although I love free enterprise and the America dream of the freedom to grow a small business, the flow of money tends to flow faster in the direction of the most money.

Big business is rarely interested in the good of the whole, for this we have a democracy.

Posted in All posts from the start Oil Machine/politics Public Transportation

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Interesting opinion article in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Hidden costs will make Turnpike deal a bad one
Summary:

• Huge unseen financial incentives pull from the tax base during the deal


• Costs associated with ensuring the contract gets inforced


• With tax subsidies greatest in the first 15 years, the profit window will rapidly close, leaving the company with aging and expensive infrastructure and large debt remaining for the rest of a century.


• This deal was negotiated in secret without public input and information. Pennsylvanians had less than a month to read and digest a 686-page contract and attempt to predict and value how its thousands of conditions might affect the commonwealth through 2084

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I was walking around my village today and a couple neighbors were responding to my blog entry Why can't "WE" keep making a profit on the turnpike? (6/25)

One neighbor was blaming Gov. Ed Randell for siphoning the money off to Philadelphia under the current set-up. I drop off the mail for another neighbor who often is listening to Gary Sutton. She just plain asked my opinion on the merits. I have yet to hear anyone, except the governor, say they think it's a really good idea, "it's slam-dunk" he said.

I believe the heart of the matter is a difference in perspective that has widened between the ever increasing transience of business and what the great population hopes government's long-term commitment is to them.

When you privatize a public entity ownership is moved from government to the interest of a group of investors. Government is you and me because we elect and reject those who represent us.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission was created in 1937 to build, finance, operate and maintain the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The commission is comprised of five members. Four members are appointed by the Governor of Pennsylvania. So ultimately the turnpike management is an arm of government, made of people we elect and reject.

Barcelona-based Abertis Infraestructuras, Abertis investor Criteria CaixaCorp of Spain and Citi Infrastructure Investors offered $12.8 billion to lease the turnpike. (AP) I will not be on a seat of the board of directors of a company in Spain or the equally nebulous Citi Infrastructure Investors group. What is my recourse if i had a concern about the business of the turnpike or what my tolls are financing.

Meanwhile, up north 80 percent Interstate 80 needs resurfacing to replace more than half of its pavement, which was applied between 1958 and 1970. Officials proposed replacing 60 bridges within the first 10 years. Sixteen of the interstate's bridges are structurally deficient and 13 are in worse condition, which the turnpike described as "fracture critical." pittsburghlive.com

The scramble is on to get tolls on I-80 because PennDOT cannot fund a complete rebuild. Any bids on I-80? Going once, going twice... hello, any takers? Mmmm, must not be such a good deal.

From personal experience over the past 28 years of driving on it, The Pennsylvania Turnpike have been a very well maintained road in road surface and snow removal. It

The turnpike is currently a non-profit meaning they have to put the revenue from tolls into the road.

Posted in All posts from the start Oil Machine/politics Public Transportation

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I supposed the clinical thing to do would be to calculate cost vs. environmental impact and come up with a nice squeaky green conclusion, but recently my conclusions seem to be made more out a belief that our open ("free" doesn't really apply) market for energy needs to be placed in check by the only force that can bring change.

Calculated, individual consumer choices multiplied by millions of people.

My friend Matt has a company car with paid gas for personal use. He said to me today, "I don't care if the gas is free - I just want to use my motorcycle because it doesn't use (uses half) gas." In 2004, he purchased (which he can't sell now) a Chevy Suburban that gets 15 mpg and never considered the price of gas.

My neighbor Chuck's new full-sized pickup is now collecting dirt around the wheels for sometimes two weeks at a time. He drives a 115 mpg scooter to work.

My retired neighbor on a fixed budget told me today, "I am going to hold on to my economic stimulus check so i can pay for fuel oil this Winter" A tax money give-a-way to spark the economy, funneled into the oil machine that is squeezing the economy in the first place.

We are entering the uncharted free market waters. Huge global energy monopolies that use raw materials that are irresistible to investors and tied to everything as a reason to make it more expensive. We can't regulate it, tax it or force it to do anything. The concept of oil just got too big in business and in our hearts.

The only force that can save the world from suicidal greed; the consumer stands alone with a choice to become super hero or victim.

I like the electric lawn mower more than the gas, simply because it does not use gas. It's two gallons of gasoline that went unsold this Summer.

Posted in All posts from the start Electric History Oil Machine/politics Tax incentives

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Oil closed at $136.04 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 3.8%, the biggest daily loss in value since March 19.

In a monthly report released on Tuesday, the Energy Information Administration projected that U.S. petroleum consumption will shrink by 400,000 barrels a day in 2008, nearly 40% more than EIA's June projection of a decline of 290,000 barrels.

The change was "based on prospects for a weak economy and record high crude oil and product prices extending into 2009," the EIA said in the report.

The EIA also said global oil consumption will grow by 900,000 barrels a day in 2008, as demand growth in developing countries will more than offset declines in the U.S. and other developed countries. marketwatch.com

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I was stretched out on my deck tonight gazing at the sky while a storm rolled in.
I came to the conclusion that only the sun and the rain, as long as they fall above my property, are free. What comes from the sky above my head cannot be taxed nor can it be repackaged, marketed and sold back to me at compounded profit and then taxed.

Harnessing these things in my backyard, I could take control of my increasingly squeezed and controlled by corporate entity - life.

The secret is in the invention, not buying the product.

I am going to build a rain collection system to water my garden. I can tell you right now that it will probably take 40 years to pay for the parts since water is pretty cheap, but it will be an exercise in securing freedom and independence. A working sculpture of hope for my future.

Posted in All posts from the start Innovation Oil Machine/politics Solar Water Power Wind Power

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