Our Cranky Environmentalist, Bob Scheulen, decided it was time to buy a new car. He ended up finding out he really just needed a "ride". We would love to hear your wonderful responses to this blog/column by taking2 simple steps: (1) Go to our website at www.forthegrandchildren.org and register. You don't need to join 4tgc to do this this. We will email you immediately a log-in password. (2) Once you have a log-in password you can return to the site and sign-in and then click on Bob's column and respond. Please let us know your experience with doing this as we keep experimenting with this communication tool. There are a few more coming. Also note our new format of highlighting only one column on the paper.

Cars, Carbon Cool: In Search of Fuel Economy

Now that summer is over, most of us (alas including me) have already used far more than our carbon allocations driving around and having fun, so it seemed high time to try to do something about it. In this case, I'm not talking about bicycling and walking (that's a topic for another day), but rather doing it the American way-by writing a check! Armed with good intentions and no research at all, we hit the car lots looking for better gas mileage. Little did we know that this simple act would bring up so many issues.

In the back of our subconscious we knew that cars are all inefficient pollution machines that not only spit out tons of carbon, but are deadly weapons that kill more than 100 people a day and maim thousands more-not to mention the millions of hours spent stuck in traffic. Like everyone else, we ignored those grim statistics and instead wandered around the car lots looking at styles, colors, comfort, and of course a nice supply of ergonomic beverage holders. The sales staff was certainly up on those things, but when it came to fuel efficiency, you're stuck with the EPA sticker-complete with the reminder that "actual mileage will vary"-meaning, of course that it will be worse than they say.

If we are serious about climate change (or at least serious about keeping the global CO2 level below 450ppm), the choices in the car lot certainly don't show it. The cars that are vaguely efficient are sold as economy cars, and the cars that are designed to be appealing suck down fuel like a college student at a beer bash. Somehow, we've come to believe that 25 or even 30 miles per gallon is good, when we probably need to be thinking in terms of 100 miles a gallon or more AND driving less. Not only that, but we'll have to abandon fossil fuels completely for something that doesn't use stored carbon: bio-fuels, hydrogen or electric, but this too is a topic for another day.

There is also the adage that says "do the best you can", and although confronted with lousy choices, there is still of course the default car for environmentalists, and I'm sure all you eco-aware readers are wondering why the cranky environmentalist doesn't already own one.

Yes, that's right, not only do I not own a Prius, I don't even want one. My excuse is that it's far too nice a car to drive on dirt roads, but the reality is much harder to admit, and it comes down to this: by my own statistical sample, the number of people under the age of 40 driving a Prius is exactly zero. While I admit my methodology is technically crap (I looked in about twenty vehicles), my emotional meter doesn't care about statistical correctness. Nor does it matter that I'm over 50 and AARP has been barking at my door for a few years now. I'm going to need some enticement-like maybe a built in senior discount.

We sat in it, and tried to imagine driving it, but like most everyone else, we fell victim to our own vanity. Face it, a car isn't just transportation, it's a fashion accessory and a status symbol. Honda has already found out the hard way that most Prius owners want their car to shout "green" loud and clear. What we really wanted was an efficient car that said 'ordinary folks who aren't old enough for AARP'. Too bad there aren't any car execs reading this.

Sitting at home weeks later, I'm starting to see what the car companies see. We all have so much of our collective identity in cars. No one is going to drive a new car home from the lot and rave to their friends about its fuel economy-it's about how fast it goes, how cool it is, how cute it is, and whose got the most beverage holders.

The next week I got a further lesson in car culture when I decided to replace my radio which has been playing classical music from KING-FM for months now (whether I wanted it to or not). After settling on a model that is undoubtedly more radio than I'll ever need, the young man asked me, "Where's your ride?". An hour later I'm driving away in the same 1998 Honda Civic, but now that it's pimped out with the latest digital gizmo with more controls than I'll ever use, it's no longer just a car-it's my ride. On the way home, I'm switching stations with reckless abandon, and starting to understand why the people driving around in their Armada, Land Devourer or Hog Master Deluxe always look so smug. All this time I was driving a car, and they were in their ride.

Environmentalists are fond of referring to SUV drivers as selfish morons, all while booking their next airline trip on an eco-safari in the Amazon without batting an eyelash. As its turns out, we're pretty much all carbon gluttons and no one likes to sacrifice. Getting people to give up their ride is going to be as hard as getting them to give up their diet of McDonald's. It might even be that they're no more uncaring about climate change than the guy choking down Big Mac isn't worried about arteriosclerosis-it's more that the alternative seems like it will make them miserable.

Rather than bashing each other's weakness for products that make us feel good, what we need is a whole new low carbon lifestyle, and it needs to be both fun and cool. Rather than looking at climate change as a problem, we need to look at it as an opportunity to change everything we don't like about our car obsessed culture anyhow. (Alternatively, you can look forward to Florida losing electoral votes as it slowly sinks into the ocean.)

For now, we remain stumped-at least until we can get over our fear that people will think we're one of those soy latte drinking types who use old copies of our Sierra Club magazine for toilet paper and feel its our moral duty to turn off every light-even at friends' homes.

And of course, at some point, I'm going to have to stop collecting broken electronics in my attic and admit I'll never fix any of them (including the radio that's stuck on KING-FM)...but that also is a topic for another day.

Bob Scheulen, AKA The Cranky Environmentalist October 4, 2007

This is Volume/issue 1.9. We have archived prior issues of this newsletter under Resources/A Joyful Future at www.forthegrandchildren.org. You can always unsubscribe to these emails by replying to them with unsubscribe in the subject line- but we hope you don't as we have big hopes for this work. Special request: Please notify us if this weekly letter is difficult to read and why, and also what your browser and operating system is? You could also give us feedback about the format and how we could be doing it better. Thank you.

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