There is wonderful news today for planet earth. No really. I'm not kidding. It's on the front page of the New York Times. Well, OK, it's not actually on the front page but it's in a story that starts on the front page. The story is about the price of energy in the very short term, which has of course become a political football in the next-five-minutes time frame of American politics. But if you follow the story to the inside pages, and make it to paragraph 15, way down at the bottom, you will find some big news with major implications for the next, say, few hundred years: Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May compared with the same period last year.
9.6 billion fewer miles.
Without any political leadership whatsoever. Without any increase in funding for our pathetic public transportation system. Without a national mobilization. Without a coordinated grassroots effort. Without a system for carpooling. Without employer encouragement. Without anyone patting them on them on the back and thanking them for finally thinking of their children and their children's children and their children's children's...
Gas went up to $4 a gallon and Americans cut out nearly 10 billion miles of driving in one month.
That could have happened anytime in the last 20 years.
This is real, measurable, verified data that shows that we can solve the climate crisis. No disagreement between Republicans and Democrats. No slimy attack ads. No political hacks trying to hide away the data.
How many miles do you think we could save if gas went to $5 a gallon? 20 billion miles a month? What if we had $5 a gallon gas, and a coordinated national program kick-start massive investment in public transportation, shift work schedules to support carpooling, and provide financial assistance to those hit hardest financially? How many billions of miles would we save?
It's wonderful news. Really. Just don't think too much about the fact that after 40 years of environmental activism, our biggest step forward comes from an inadvertent rise in the price of oil that our politicians on both sides of the aisle are working to avert.
In looking at the US energy statistics site I found that we are drilled about 49,000 oil and gas wells in 2007. This is nearly twice as many wells as the 25,000 that were drilled in 2000. Gas prices have gone up as the number of wells drilled has increased.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/txt/ptb0407.html
Our goal should be, to become so energy efficient that we can export gas and oil.
The carbon dioxide emission fees would result in a federal revenue of $600 Billion dollars. Flat rebating this to 130 million households would be $4,600 per household per year.
See the http://carbontax.org site for details.
It would result in the removal of the Democrats from their seat of power in Congress.
Oil markets? Free? Seriously? Look again.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/12159.html
We need indeed a renewable energy infrastructure or there will be dire consequences for our Nation as well as the rest of the global community. rather than wasting more money and lives in the war for Iraqi oil and a permanent presence in the oil rich middle east. Those funds would be better spent at home developing alternates to oil. Many researchers have already said that we are either at peak production or close to it. Crude oil prices will never reach a level where we get relatively "cheap" gas. Sure there will be fluctuations, but the overall trend will be up, not down.
Think how much better off the environment and with it all of us would be if we spent the same energy and money on developing alternates, rather than continuing as usual. An investment in renewable energy and alternate fuels would also create an abundance of new employment and entrepreneurial opportunities that would benefit not only the planet, but also our ailing Nation.