Last May in this space, I wrote: "A gallon of gas is currently $2.25. In a few years, gas at this price may seem like a bargain." Now, you don't have to claim to be heir to the prognosticating prowess of Nostradamus to have predicted that the price of oil would have gone up in a year's time, given the general instability of the world's largest oil-producing region, increasing demand from the emerging consumer giants China and India, and continued avaricious domestic consumption—but who expected to be paying almost a dollar more per gallon a year later? (On April 25, gas was $3.05 per gallon in Kingston.)
If we plot out this price increase over a decade—not adjusting for inflation, dwindling reserves, further instability, or adding in any logorhythmic doohickeys—in 2016, gas will be $13.05 per gallon. This number seems absurd—who would pay so much for gas?!?—but even as I balk at this figure, my mind is already rationalizing it away. Gas prices can't go up so steeply forever, they'll level out around $5 a gallon. There's got to be some major untapped petroleum deposits they just haven't found yet. This country will have created a comprehensive public transportation system by 2016 so I won't need my car. I'll switch my car over to biodiesel and drive on French fry grease. Solar panels on the roof might do the trick. I'll trade in my Honda for one of those fuel-efficient European mini-cars that gets 100 miles to the gallon and fits in the trunk of a Cadillac. Maybe I'll just be making a lot more money in 10 years and it won't matter how much gas costs.
Or maybe I'll be riding my bike a lot more. The only fuel it requires is the kind I'm already getting—and I make it a point never to skip any refueling sessions.
Just in time, National Bike-to-Work Day is here again: Friday, May 19. While we cannot all ride our bicycles to work (although sometime in the not-so-distant future we may all have to), if you live closer than 10 miles to your office, I urge you to oil up your chain, don your helmet, and pedal to work on that day; studies show that once people start bicycle commuting, they often stay bicycle commuters. Get your co-workers to join you! Last year, we organized a strong Luminary Publishing contingent, and plan to do so again this year. For more information on Bike-to-Work day, visit www.bikemonth.com.
If you can't bike to work on the 19th, there are some great bike events in the coming months, including the Five-Borough Bike Tour in New York City on May 7 (42 traffic-free miles); and the Harlem Valley Rail Trail Ride in Millerton on July 30. (Visit www.bikenewyork.org for details.) The park-advocacy group Parks and Trails New York also runs two multi-day rides during the summer months: an eight-day, 400-mile ride from Buffalo to Albany along the Erie Canal, July 9–16; and the Great Hudson Valley Pedal, a six-day, 200-mile tour from Albany to New York City, August 15–20. For more information, visit www.ptny.org.
· According to AAA, despite the rise in the price of gasoline, Americans are using 1.5 percent more fuel than last year. (So much for price hikes curbing consumption.)
· 80 percent of Americans do not get the recommended 30 minutes of moderate daily activity.
· The average number of barrels of oil consumed daily in the US is 19 million. Driving is responsible for 43 percent of them.
· Motorized vehicles are responsible for 70 percent of the carbon monoxide, 45 percent of the nitrogen dioxide, and 34 percent of the hydrocarbons we produce.
· Nearly a third of the gas used in the US goes for trips of three miles or less, usually to transport a single passenger.
· More than half of all Americans live less than five miles from where they work.
· One hundred bicycles can be produced for the same energy and resources it takes to build one medium-sized automobile.
—Brian K. Mahoney
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING A pioneering air-pollution regulation pending to take effect in California next year would tighten emission requirements for lawn mowers, eliminating 22 tons of smog-forming chemicals from the Golden State's air daily, the equivalent of 800,000 cars. Ounce for ounce, lawn mower engines in California contribute 93 times more smog-forming emissions than cars, accounting for two percent of all engine smog. The reason: Lawn mowers are not required to have catalytic converters, a requirement on all US cars since 1975. Briggs & Stratton and other small engine makers contend that adding the converter would create a fire hazard, adding heat to already hot engines. An EPA study concluded that no fire hazard existed, but Briggs & Stratton is paying $650,000 for an independent safety review in Sweden anyway. Source: New York Times On April 18, William Bennett, a former Reagan and Bush Sr. administration official and recovered gambling addict, declared on his radio program, "Morning in America," that three journalists who won Pulitzer prizes the day before—Dana Priest of the Washington Post and James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times—were "worthy of jail" for their reporting. The prize winning articles—on secret prisons the CIA was running in Eastern Europe and the NSA domestic spying program—were both reports President Bush urged the papers not to publish. (The Times waited a year to publish its report on the NSA.) Source: Editor & Publisher In March, Georgia Tech college student Ruth Malhorta filed suit against her school, claiming that GT's ban on speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation infringes on her right to "free exercise" of her religion, as her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. Malhorta's lawsuit is the result of a reprimand she received from college officials after sending a letter to a campus gay group, calling it "a sex club...that can't even manage to be tasteful." Malhorta is seeking unspecified damages. The Food and Drug Administration announced on April 20 that "no sound scientific studies" support the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, citing a combined review by federal drug, regulatory, and research agencies. This statement contradicts a 1999 review by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious scientific advisory group, that found marijuana to be "moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting." Eleven states have legalized medical marijuana, but last year the Supreme Court overruled those laws, stating that the federal government could arrest anyone using marijuana, even those using it for medical purposes in states that have legalized it. Source: New York Times On April 6, the Center for Media and Democracy released a report titled "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed," exposing how corporate-funded video news releases—fake TV news—are routinely aired, without disclosure, as though they were independent news reports. Over a 10-month period, CMD documented TV newsrooms' use of 36 video news releases—a fraction of the thousands produced each year—by 77 stations in both large and small markets, collectively reaching half the US population. The video news releases were for 49 different clients, including General Motors, Pfizer, Intel, and Capital One, and in each case, the TV stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. Source: Center for Media and Democracy On April 6, during an all-day conference on global-warming policy, the Senate Energy and Resources Committee heard statements from utility and energy executives of eight corporations—including General Electric, Shell, and two of the largest utilities in the US, Duke Energy and Exelon—either actively welcoming or accepting mandatory federal caps on greenhouse gas emissions. This is the first time energy executives have requested caps on carbon emissions, and is a 180-degree about-face from previous denials that carbon emissions have anything to do with global warming. Industry players say they're concerned about the patchwork of inconsistent climate regulations on the state level. Source: Grist.com |