I was standing at the corner preparing to cross the street on the way to my bus when at the line gathered a Gaggle of Prius. They are a proud but silent breed. No, I'm not going to say anything about recalls and gas pedals. Every car company that has ever existed has had engineering mistakes. Those mistakes sometimes, tragically, result in serious injury or death. It's one of the dangers of being in that business.
I'm intrigued by hybrid cars. The engineering fascinates me and I think to some degree the idea is headed the right way. I do shake my head at the sycophants who faun over them as if they are the key element in a Gorian recycling ceremony. We are frequently asked if we have considered a hybrid as an alternative to continuing to feed the Oil Companies. We spend most of our time at freeway speed so those neat little electric motors will seldom kick on and we wouldn't get close to maximizing the mileage potential. By the time you compare the cost of buying a hybrid to the cost of our Hyundai's the money just didn't make sense.
I couldn't agree more though about needing an alternative to feeding the greed. I'm struggling to find any redeeming aspects to $2.79 a gallon. When I see things like Exxon Roars to Record In Oil Slump and read about $45.2 billion in profits for 2008 I want to show them my lunch. During the height of the recent gas price silliness our fuel costs reached a monthly cost equivalent large enough to lease a Lexus. I'm not kidding; we tipped $600 a month more than once and that's when I was only going in once a week. With me riding the bus and the absurdness of our friends at Zurich Insurance (they gave Tammy's mom her pink slip a few months back) our monthly bill is sub $300 again.
The truly boggling part is trying to understand what's causing it. From all that I can see the big issue here isn't an oil supply problem (other than to say that OPEC likes to squeeze that Bug Out Bob toy frequently) it's the lack of refineries in the US that can turn it to gas! Ok, this is when my friends who worry about the environment step in and like to make the point that this helps keep our air clean. (Please no Global Warming comments, that's a completely different conversation.) The problem with all this is that your average guy out there trying to make it back and forth to work are stuck in the middle of this never ending, no solution in sight, carnival house of horrors with all the idea pushers screaming BOO and cackling.
To all of this our government likes to make knee jerk reactions that make great noise in the press but at the best amount to a "mustard burp, momentarily tangy and then forgotten in the air". At their worst those decisions have lead our farmers to stop growing food/feed and start growing corn for ethanol. Resonates well in a sound bite but goes quickly south as the prices skyrocket at Safeway.
Are we sure we can't find ways to reduce emissions enough to be responsible, build the refineries we need, and continue to search for good alternative fuel sources? Everyone wants to sit out on the far edges of the issue when a reasonable compromise seems possible to me. Unfortunately coming up with reasonable compromises that look out for all concerned parties just isn't any fun and doesn't play well in the news. If peacemaking could be used as an advertising gadget I wonder what the world would look like. Apples and oranges I guess.
Don't drive angry! Drive weird!
No comments:
Post a Comment