The Environment On My Mind

It has been a long time since I posted here! We went on Spring Break, travelled, had a good time visiting with Susan's parents, and I stopped writing. But now I can't hold back any longer. Although I stopped writing, I have continued reading unabated. Most of the really fascinating things that I have read lately have all had one common theme: we are substantially degrading our environment at unprecedented levels. It is scary to think about the world as it may be in a few short years if we continue to be mostly unconcerned about the effects of global warming, reliance on fossil fuels for transportation, the general overconsumption of consumer products, and a lack of a wide ranging effort to recycle the refuse of a large consumer economy. This is what I've been thinking about a lot lately.

The topper is that I'm currently reading A Friend of the Earth by T. Corraghesan Boyle, a good novel that looks forward to our potentially toxic climate and environment, if we manage to stay the current course. The book also looks (not far) back to the environmental movements of the '90s. It's a sad look back, because the environmentalists seem so desperate and rash, and that leads to action that is small in scale, and extreme in nature. Their efforts are doomed from the beginning, and the general public pays little attention until it is much too late. Unfortunately, my reading lately leads me to imagine a scenario much like what is described in the book. We are doing too little, and quite soon it may be too late to counteract what has happened to our environment in the last hundred years.

The articles that have knocked me for an eco-loop lately:

"It's a Flat World, After All" by Thomas Friedman
"The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler
"The Rise of the Green Machine" by Brendan I. Koerner, in Wired Magazine

The writings at Wendy Richardson's blog have also been influential. It is really motivating to see what other eco-minded people are doing to act locally. My projects this weekend: a composting area in the backyard, an improved recycling collection area in my garage, checking to see if the garbageman really takes our recycling to a facility, not just the landfill, and some more eco-reading.

A week ago last Friday, I got in line, and put a deposit down on a Toyota Hybrid Prius. You've got to start somewhere.

My New Car

Today we are visiting Susan's parents. They have a nice Toyota dealership a couple of miles away, so I was excited to finally get a chance to go over and sit in a hybrid Prius. What a cool little car! I'm thinking even more seriously about purchasing one of these now that I found out that I can actually fit in. It has the lowest emissions of any car available in the U.S., gets about 45-50 MPG, and has a lot of cool technology options, although they are a bit pricey. The car itself is not that expensive, listing at about 21K, but alas, my favorite options build the price up significantly.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60311187@N00/8248059/

The car at the dealership had been ordered, but not purchased by the people that asked for it. It sold within 3 hours after I called about it. It was on the lot for only about 12 hours. A couple purchased it literally 5 minutes after we got there. It's a hot commodity.

I can't wait to leave my Explorer behind.