No, my Blog Template is Not a Statement About My Politics

. . . but I am going green. Or greenER. Lets call it yellow.

So I was just reading over some of my last posts (vanity, you know) and I realized something - white print on a black background looks cool at first, but after a while it starts messing with your eyes. As I tend to be long-winded (or long-blogged), this really started to bug the crap out of me after one or two entries.

So, this is a thanks to people for putting up with the harsh (albeit awesome-looking) color scheme without complaining. Hopefully the new duds will be easier on the eyes.

And because I feel a lot like ranting today, here's a two-fer. Umm. . . lets pick: Yuppy Greenness.

Its a term I invented myself. 5 seconds ago. Let me explain - no, no, there is too much. Let me sum up: Yuppy Greens are people who like to pretend they are green, but are unwilling to change their lifestyle in significant ways. These are the housewives who drive 20 miles in their Ford Monstrosity, V8, 400 horsepower land-mover, while drinking over-priced imported coffee in a disposable cup, to buy the cute little, popular, curly 'eco-friendly' compact flourescent light bulbs at Wal-Mart, and who then go home and proceed to leave the lights on in every room in the house all night because it helps them feel safe.

Yuppy Greens are the bane of actual greens, who are taking pains to reduce their carbon footprint, shop with cloth shopping bags, separate their own recyclables, and once in a rare while actually go out and enjoy the environment. Yuppy Greens have made eco-conscious behavior a trend. The latest fad, like skinny pants. Their hearts aren't in it, but they like 'seeming' to be green.

The cold hard truth is that Americans don't want to be green. We don't like to ride our bicycles. Bikes are for junior high kids. We don't even like driving scooters or small cars. We like big, powerful things. We don't do terribly well in the planning department, because everything has been 'convenienced' so that we don't have to think ahead. We don't have to bring bags to the store, because the store has bags for us. We don't have to bring refillable mugs, because the store has cups for us. We don't have to use anything durable and reusable, because a disposable one will be provided for us.

Going green in a meaningful way will mean a complete shift in the way we think about our world, most importantly the way we think about our usage of energy. The wastefullness that is stuck in my craw right now has to do with the inefficiency of cars. Cars are horribly wasteful, even hybrids and electric cars. Here is what I mean -

My car weighs 4435 pounds empty. I weigh in at roughly 230, depending on if I am hungry or not. When I am in the car, the whole package weighs 4665. So, when I am driving around, using up .037 gallons per mile, the weight of the vehicle is only 5% me. Only 5 percent! That makes me want to hit Elmo! (OK, so a lot of things make me want to hit Elmo, including Elmo himself, but that is another rant)

So lets do a little math here. Recently I am paying $4 a gallon for gas. Ok, so 5% of that $4 goes to moving me. That works out to be roughly 20 cents a gallon is spent on MYSELF, while $3.80 is spent on MY CAR. I am paying 19 times more to move the thing that should be moving me than I am paying to move myself! That is so backwards!

Sure, the 2 tons of steel keep me safe. That is the usual argument used. Safety. Well, I don't buy it. If all the cars out their weigh, lets say, 400 pounds, like a typical ATV. Well, if I only have less than 1000 pounds of vehicle and driver careening my way, I don't need 2 tons of steel to keep me safe, then, do I? No. I need more along the line of - hey! - 400 pounds of steel!

Its the same phenomenon of two people running into each-other. If they are both going full steam, they will wipe out and scrape their knees or whatever. However, since their bodies are roughly similar in mass, they don't do any terrible damage to one-another. They mostly bounce off each-other since the transfer of energy is so close to even.

Alright, so we should be able to transfer that same concept to vehicles, right? If we all drove light cars, there would be no extra safety concern. Crashes would still be lethal as a function of velocity, but no more than they are right now.

OK, so what I am getting at here is I want a light-weight, stable, elementally protected people mover that does not out-weigh me by more than 2 tons. I would go for one that just outweighed me by 100%. How cool would that be: a car that I would dead-lift. I would be all over that. "Hey honey, could you hold the car up while I change the tire?" That would be sweet!

I know people are working on this exact idea, but I never hear about it unless I go looking for it. I hear all about the Honda Metropolitan, which gets over 100 mpg. But its a scooter, and I can't drive it over 30 mph. I want a stable, climate controlled vehicle that has four wheels and is not a death-trap at high speeds. Most of all, I want to pay to move myself around, not pay to move my self-mover around.