Toyota’s joined GM and Ford in opposing a law that would require more efficient vehicles. The Union of Concerned Scientists, Tom Friedman and Others are asking why…and whether Toyota still deserves it’s Green Image.

What? You say you own a Prius? Time for you to get out there and demand change from your Toyota dealer. Believe me, they’ll listen to you a lot more than a bunch of geeky scientists and hippies. You know where you bought your car. Read the article, then pick up the phone and make some demands. Let me know what they say, please.
(Photo: Tommy Chong’s lowrider Prius . . . with members from the Orange County Prius Club)

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[tags]toyota, prius, gm, ford [/tags]

Don’t read my blog. Read James Howard Kunstler’s. He’s a lot smarter, a lot funnier, and has outpublished me by a count of something like fifty to zero.
Below, I’ve posted a snippet from yesterday’s Kunstler post, one which I hope you will read in it’s entirety HERE. He rips straight to the heart of the matter: the refusal of the eco-gentry to be truly inconvenienced.
“My position on this can be easily misunderstood. I don’t want civilization to collapse (I like Mozart and access to root canal). I don’t want Homo sapiens to go extinct, or the planet to parboil. I certainly don’t believe in doing nothing in the face of this emergency. But I also don’t believe we are going to make any hassle-free switch in the way we run things — or that we should want to. Would the USA be a better place if we could run Wal-Mart and Las Vegas on wind power? I don’t think so. Would the public benefit from another hundred years of suburban living — and an economy based largely on creating ever more of it? All the Prozac in the universe would not avail to offset the diminishing returns of that bullshit.

In my travels, I have noticed a disturbing theme among the educated minority of eco-advocates: they are every bit as dedicated to the status quo (in their own way) as the NASCAR morons and shopping mall developers. The eco-advocates want cars, too, and all the prerogatives (like free parking and country living) that go with them, just like the WalMart shoppers. If this were not so, then why do the eco-advocates cream in their jeans whenever somebody presents a snazzy new vehicle that runs on a fuel other than gasoline? Indeed, why are some of the eco-friendly pouring all their efforts into the invention of such things instead of into walkable communities and the reform of our stupid land-use laws?”

Again, read the entire post HERE. Then bookmark Kunstler’s page and check back with him. Oh, and it’s okay to bookmark mine as well as, in aping his form, I’m bound to say something somewhat entertaining at some point.

(Why the pic of Captain Kangaroo? Well, he had a sidekick named Mr. Green Jeans. . . reference is made by Kunstler. . . a bit obscure, but so is this website!)

[tags]climate change, james howard kunstler, kunstler, walmart[/tags]

The corn used to produce the ethanol needed to fill a 12-gallon Prius tank will feed a person for Sudan for six months.

Just something to think about.

[tags]ethanol, prius, sudan[/tags]

This evening, late though it is for me (no, really, my eyes are drooping even though I’ve had iced tea and I never have iced tea because caffeine and I just don’t mix - don’t tell anyone but I think it gives me gas), I have something which one or two or three or four or five or more of you may find interesting (note that I did NOT choose the easy rhyme of ‘four or more’ but I point it out nonetheless).

What is it, Tod, that you have for me, you ask?

It’s on page 42 and 43 and 44 and 45 or so of Kurt Vonnegut’s last bit of whimsy, “A Man Without a Country.” Go buy it. You can get the paperback so it won’t break your bank. Besides, you waste too much money on booze and eating out, don’t you? Tomorrow night, why not invite your friends over to your place for drinks? It’s Wednesday (the day that fantastic things happen), much more sociable, the liquor is far cheaper (Bev Mo always has sales) and besides, you’re not really going to get laid if you go out to a bar, are you? And if you do, what of the quality? Ever asked a happy couple, Wheredya two meet? and hear “At a bar” as a response? If you have, you’re hanging out with some scary people and you need to just . . . walk . . . away. Come on, my friend. Buck up and try the at-home-social hour. It can be really fun. Especially if you have marbles. Do you know how to play marbles? With the chalk circle and the shooters? Ye olde timers call real marble-maestros “mibsters”. You can learn about this and so much more at the Marble Museum? I’m telling you, there are some swift-looking bits o’ glass at which to gander at the Marble Museum. When you’re finished learning about Vitro Agates and the like, you’ll be well-prepared for having the pals over to your place.

Slap me. I’m going on about nothing. It’s the fart-inducing tea, I swear to god.

From KV’s book, reprinted entirely w/out permission (forgive the typos as I’ve been using a typewriter a lot lately and the switch back to the keyboard is a bit jarring and I’m much to lazy at present to correct miskeys. do you forgive me, sweetest of sweet loves?):

“. . . my car back then, a Studebaker as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any left. Cold turkey. Can I tell you the truth? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on. . .

Yes and we are presently touching off nearly the very last whiffs and drops and chunks of them (fossil fuels). All lights are about to go out. No more electricity. All forms of transportation are about to stop, and the planet Earth will soon have a crust of skulls and bones and dead machinery.

And nobody can do a damned thing about it. It’s too late in the game.

Don’t spoil the party, but here’s the truth: We have squandered our planet’s resources, including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so now there isn’t going to be one. So there goes the Junior Prom, but that’s not the half of it. ”

Told you I found something good. Good old, dead Kurt. He knew. He knows. His nose knew and continues to grow or is that your nails and that’s only if he hasn’t been cremated. Does anyone know if Vonnegut was cremated?

If I had my songs with me, the Song O’ the Day would very much be “Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant (he had a nice post-E.A. career, founded his own studio “Ice Blue” or something like that down in Barbados or T&T or some island nation that makes rum. Far from a one-hit-wonder, Mr. Grant). Not only because it’s appropriate, but because the apartment in which I am holed up is on the flip side of Abbot Kinney from Electric Avenue in Venice, California. I tried to take a Polaroid of the sign for posting somewhere online but it came out too dark. Correction, I didn’t try to take a picture, I did take a picture, I simply failed to take a good picture. Kind of like tonight at the Miranda July reading at which I not only invaded Ms. July’s space with my camera and awkwardness, but took a pair of middling shots.

Ah well. I never went to Junior Prom. Three high schools in three years spared me that particular bit of spectacle (RIP Raoul Vaneigem).

**bonus points and a free gift by mail for anyone who gets the obscure title reference***

climate-change, eddy-grant, fossil-fuels, kurt-vonnegut, miranda-july, negativland, raoul-vaneigm

I see the Prius’ whiz by me on the highway routinely (ever noticed how Prius drivers drive like speed freaks? It’s as if they’re trying to prove that their car is ‘manly’ or ’sporty’ somehow. Regardless of performance, the Prius rivals only the Pontiac Aztek as the ugliest car ever made. Not that it matters how your vehicle looks, mind you, not if you’re smugly trying to save the world via a $30,000 consumer purchase. I imagine the joy of 10 million U.S. drivers switching from gas vehicles to electric. I can hear the shouts of victory from short-sighted self-professed eco-warriors. And I want to cry when I imagine the environmental catastrophe as we annually dump into the ground (and water) the billions of pounds of toxic chemicals contained in the short-lived batteries of those electric cars.

No matter how one looks at it, driving cars of any type is not going to make a difference. We’ll simply trade one problem (ethanol, batteries, continued sprawl, et cetera) for our existing one (oil). In addition, we’ll still be reliant upon petroleum to produce the vehicles in the first place. No, the only solution is an overwhelming shift to mass transit and a complete restructuring of our suicidal suburbs. Cars must go. Read THIS ESSAY to understand what I’m talking about as I’m currently battling wicked, nasty allergies as a result of rolling down a grassy hill with my son a few hours ago and I’m fairly certain that clarity is beyond me at present. Most laugh when they hear suggestions that autos of any type are evil, shrugging the suggestion off as too radical, too unlikely to take hold to even consider. What’s worse, even the ‘greenest’ think to themselves, “I will never give up my individual, personal transport system.” Not even to save the planet? Nope, not even to save the planet.I had a point. What was it. Oh, the Red Car line of Los Angeles. See that picture above? Taken in 1959, it shows dozens of junked electric train cars - all headed to Japan where they were used as scrap steel, melted down, and reformed into Datsuns and Toyotas which were then shipped back for sales in the United States. Nice sustainable loop, no? Once upon a time, Los Angeles had a robust mass transit system. Even a subway. Over 1000 miles of track. Over 100 MILLION annual riders at its peak.

What happened? Why did the Red Car line die? There are many reasons, some even suspect a conspiracy (which isn’t that farfetched when one considers that GM bought up and shut down 100+ electric lines in 45 U.S. cities), but the primary culprit, of course, is the U.S. citizen’s overwhelming preference for the automobile. Not that the car was or is capable of delivering passengers to their destinations faster (even the 1930 Red Line maintained a pace that exceeds current LA averages), but the individual expression afforded to us via color combinations and sport packages (notice that the Prius now has a ’sport’ edition?) plays into the great American mythos that trumpets individualism as a key to success.

Well, some things are simply ahead of their time. So it was with our great electric trains. Yes, their energy source is also rife with systemic problems, but given that they are mass transit systems, the per-capita energy expenditures are whittled to incredibly small amounts. The time to scream and shout for mass transit in all world metros is right now. Take those tens of thousands you were planning to spend on a statement vehicle and invest them instead in your local citizens-for-clean rail movement (odds are, there is such a group in your area).

About the image: I stole it, without permission, from the terrific book ‘Imagining Los Angeles’ published by the L.A. Times. Click here to pick up a copy. If enough of you do this, perhaps they won’t sue me.

Song o’ the Day is another by Nick Cave (get used to it, I suppose). Rock out to the Train Song, if you so desire: [audio:cavetrain.mp3]

I finally caved in and picked up a TerraPass for my uber-unsexy thoroughly emasculating 2005 Volvo V50 wagon (rated the third most eco-friendly wagon, btw, a fact that only makes me feel only nominally better about driving a gas vehicle). I was on the fence for months about the pros and cons of carbon offset schemes (the carbon offset folks probably hate the term ’scheme’ because it is typically tinged with negative associations, but it’s really the only appropriate word with which to end that last sentence). A typical ‘PRO’ argument can be found HERE. A well-thought ‘CON’ article can be read HERE.

Dan Becker, director of Sierra Club’s global warming program sums up the dilemma: “On the one hand, there is the potential benefit of educating people through offsets. On the other hand, if people view offsets like papal indulgences that allow you to continue to pollute, then it’s probably not a good idea.” Ultimately, I’m convinced that despite Gore’s best efforts to tell 1/3 of the story, and judging from Pelosi and Boxer’s anemic proposed climate change legislation, more education is very much needed.

TerraPass does a fantastic job of providing customers with opportunities to provoke discussions regarding carbon offsets. Besides offsetting your driving habits (your fee is based on your auto model + miles driven per year), you receive:

() A TerraPass decal and registration card (the latter is meant to impress the Highway Patrol and any passenger who may be snooping in your glove box — does anyone actually use this space for gloves? I love gloves)

() A TerraPass logo sticker (the TP logo needs an overhaul but they say it looks great on tinted windows)

() A TerraPass bumper sticker (”Clean Up After Your Car”)

() The goofy cartoon featured above

Used in combination, one can be super-sanctimonious about one’s offsets (good for places like Berkeley and Marin County, bad for the rest of the world) but used sparingly (I just use the decal and, yes, I realize I’m overindulging in parenthesis in this post) a sticker promoting TerraPass is a nice way to remind fellow drivers that there are painless ways to promote sustainable energy solutions.

All in all, I’m happy with the purchase. I spent very little money to “save” 8000 pounds of C02 (the estimated amount my car and I will be emitting during the next year) and make something of a symbolic statement to anyone who may come close enough to my car to notice the decal (most likely, meter maids who are attracted to my car like honey - really the only women who pay me any attention so I’m not complaining).

In short, there is nothing to lose by offsetting your auto vehicles. It serves as a daily reminder that our vehicles are nasty beasts that we must reign in as much as possible. Given the crush and hassle of our daily lives, it’s easy to forget that even the ‘greenest’ auto are still highly destructive. I feel strongly that hybrid drivers, too, should pick up a TerraPass, to offset the 2950 pounds of C02 10,000 miles of Prius driving emits.

Decide for yourself at www.terrapass.com.

As for today’s song, well, it’s only tangentially related (it has the word ‘clean’ in the title) but I need only the slightest of excuses to post a great track by Aimee Mann: [audio:mann.mp3]

Let me know your thoughts on TerraPass and related offsetting, uh, mechanisms.

(I have to insert Todd Brilliant for search purposes as many don’t get the single D spelling when searching for this site. There. Did it.)

That’s right, according to GreenerCars.com, Volkswagen produces the vehicle that is above ALL OTHERS the worst offender in terms of environmental impact: the diesel VW Touareg. How bad of an offender is the Touareg? Consider that the Hummer doesn’t even place a vehicle on the most offensive list.
Even more damning is the fact that Bentley places two vehicles in the “Top 12 Meanest Vehicles for the Environment” and Lamborghini claims a spot as well. Who owns Bentley and Lamborghini? That’s right - Volkswagen. Meaning that with four entries, VW owns fully 33% of the cars on this list.

So if you tool around in a VW/Audi product, you may consider contacting your dealer to suggest that they spread the word to their VW HQ that you will not consider maintaining your brand loyalty unless they green up their act and cease producing these gross polluters.

Like Apple, VW has built a brand reputation for being an ‘ethical’ company without doing anything to deserve the label. And, like Apple, their products are among the least ecologically responsible. Together, quite a testament to the manipulative powers of ad executives who dupe even the best and brightest into identifying with products that represent the polar opposite of their professed values.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about how the vehicles are ranked, the methodology is right here.

SONG O’ THE DAY is awarded to Elastica’s hot-rockin’ “Car Song”: .

[tags]volkswagen, apple, climate change, ethanol[/tags]