A developer in New York is providing parking preferences to people with hybrid vehicles. The company says they are doing this as part of their "Green" Initiative.
What is supposed to be accomplished? More hybrids sold? That will lead to cleaner air, etc etc etc.
Yeah, but — Gas is nearly $5 a gallon (look outside your window if you live in LA). Hybrids are flying off the showroom floors. Even the state has run out of special permits for them to use HOV lanes. AND, consider this. I drive a Belchfire 8 that gets four miles to the gallon. As I drive up to this office, I will not be able to park in the convenient space in front, but drive around back to the garage. That means that I am spewing more pollutants into the air. Wouldn’t it be better to have the SUV’s park close where they can turn off their CO2 generators more quickly and let the Hybrids drive cleanly around to the back?
Seems to me this is the inverse of "Green."
While I’m on the subject. Aren’t a lot of these "Green" initiatives so much eyewash. The IPI was providing its attendee list (for their convention) in electronic form to save paper. Good idea, but in reality, isn’t it simply more convenient to have the list as an excel file…
What about Plastic wood for building. Its made out of recycled tires or whatever. It is really more environmentally efficient to separate the plastic from the metal, drive it to the collection center. Then again drive it to the factory where its melted down, then drive it to the factory where its turned into plastic wood, then well, you get the idea…Has anyone done the numbers on that? (WE have three huge trash trucks that come by our place once a week rather than one. Is separating Yard trimmings from paper, glass, and metal, from "wet" garbage REALLY that efficient. Those trucks had to be built, fueled, maintained in a fleet operation somewhere, etc. Anyone done those numbers?) Just Saying.
Remember ethanol — that comes from corn. Not only has turning corn into fuel caused a world wide food shortage and high food prices, but it turns out that its less efficient and takes more energy to produce than good ole gasoline.
I sit here in the dark, with only my display glowing, to conserve energy. We have no air conditioning, even thought its 88 degrees outside.(house is well insulated) and we have ceiling fans everywhere. However Al Gore’s house, AFTER a year of making it more "Green," uses 10% more electricity than it did before all the "Greening." Read all about it here. Al’s "Inconvenient Truth" is that he paid over 16 grand in electric costs, and nearly 14 grand in natural gas costs over the past year.
What’s that all about?
Ok, got it out of my system for another couple of weeks.
JVH
6 Responses
In Jax we give special consideration for car pools, but not hybrids. Too many people think that miles per gallon is how you measure fuel efficiency, but the real measure is “passenger” miles per gallon. My Tahoe at 16 mpg’s with 2 or 3 people in it is more fuel efficient than any hybrid with a single occupant.
The only pre-registration list I remember getting from IPI was indeed electronic, but it had no zip codes, no e-mail addresses, no phone numbers, so I couldn’t do anything with it except anticipate who would might be at the show. Several of them didn’t show up.
Full Disclosure — Dr. Jeffrey Zinger is the executive Director of the Alternative Fuels Institute which is an industry lobbying group supporting ethanol and its uses. His web site is interesting, but doesn’t address the entire problem. No matter how you slice it, taking upwards of 25% of the corn crop and turning it into ethanol is going to affect food prices. Remember, we aren’t just doing it here, but in Brazil and in other places around the world. Sure, drought and other factors have an effect on food prices, however, this just adds to the problem. Think supply and demand.
If you have increased demand and lower supply, prices go up. The inverse is also true.
You just can’t get away from true market forces. If ethanol was a profitable way to go, then why does it have to be supplemented by money from the government? Turn off the government spigot, and see just how long the ethanol industry lasts.
Just my opinion.
JVH
With all due respect, please go to the Alternative Fuels Institute’s website; http://www.fieldstofuel.org and all your answers to all your questions will be answered. If you find that they are not, please contact AFI and we will personally answer them for you. Cheers, Jeff Zeiger
I’m not a great supporter of ethanol, and it does have its problems economically, but every energy source is aided by the government spigot in some fashion, so to claim that petroleum is entirely free market is a fallacy.
With all due respect, the Alternative Fuels Institute is not an industry lobbying group. It is a non-profit institute whos’ mission it to educate the public about alternative fuels, not limited to ethanol. The institute does not cow-tow to any industry, nor do we lobby……..as a matter of fact, if we did lobby, we would loose our non-profit status. Cheers, Dr. Jeffrey B. Zeiger http://www.fieldstofuel.org