rail system

A semi-heartening comment today from this cnnfn article:

“Our country’s future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system,” Buffett said in a statement.

Shun meat to decrease climate-change impact

The United Nation’s head climate scientist has suggested that the best way to reduce greenhouse emissions is to decrease consumption of meat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7600005.stm

I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve been a vegetarian (lacto-ovo) for the last 12 years, now, it’s not that difficult. But you don’t even have to be a vegetarian. Just drop the meals where you eat meat down to 2 or 3 in a week of meals.

it’s like a cartoon

Remember Captain Planet on saturday morning cartoons? He and his weird gang of children stopped evil corporations from intentionally and with malice polluting and despoiling the planet. I always thought it was a bit hokey b/c I didn’t think people were that willfully malicious about polluting. I figured they were trying to make money and just being willfully ignorant of the problems they were causing. Not intentionally malicious.

And then you read something like this. And you think. Well, maybe they are being willfully malicious.

“… the suit accuses Chevron of responsibility for the dumping (allegedly conducted by Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001) of billions of gallons of toxic oil wastes into the region’s rivers and streams.”

Yes, they dumped toxic oil wastes into the amazon. Apparently later they went out and roasted and ate a whole bushel of kittens to celebrate.

good rule

If you fail to make even the slightest effort to save gas, you are not allowed to complain about gas prices, no matter how high they get.

From here.

making other plans – again

I liked this comment from a uk journal:

Instead of driving miles to the supermarket to load up on food just in case the shelves are cleared, or whingeing about strikers’ ability to cripple the country, we would be better advised to start looking at alternative ways of doing things, based on human energy, ingenuity and appropriate technology. Put simply, our default programmes need to be reset. We need to relocalise our lives.

It means more adjustment than merely declining the offer of yet another oil-derived plastic bag. Affluent middle classes in urban areas have to get over their hang-ups and use public transport, not just during the dispute, but thereafter.

Unless we want an ever more monstrous chunk of our budgets to be gobbled up in spiralling fuel bills, then it’s time to think about selling the second, even your only car.

If we can’t walk, bus or train it to work, then employers must start developing schemes that liberate us from environmentally-ruinous commutes, and allow more people to work from home, exploiting all the benefits of email and telephone conferencing.

Businesses need to understand that it is no longer acceptable to fly staff up and down the UK to attend meetings when they could perfectly well take the train.

I’ve had two interesting conversations this week. One with some neighbors about the cost of commuting 60 miles each way for work. Another with a co worker who commutes 37 miles each way for work. Both of them are concerned about the spike in the prices of everything. I’ve tried to help them find alternative routes/transportation to get to work. Both of them saving a good deal of money (and energy). Something I forgot to mention to them is what is said above: We need to get used to things being like this. It is not going away.