 | If Portugal Can Do It, Why Can't We ? | The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | Australia's Peak Oil Billionaire |  |
114 comments on An immodest proposal about fuel efficiency
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
114 comments on An immodest proposal about fuel efficiency
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
GAIA Host Collective
On SBS now I see that Rudd is giving $35 million of our money so that Toyota will build a Camry hybrid at Altona. The auto freaks are saying diesel is better. Nobody has come up with this radical idea of "drive less", but they did roundabout say it by mentioning public transport.
Too much fuel being burned, and yet 30% of trips less than 3km, 50% less than 5km... and Australia has an obesity problem, third fattest country in the world after the US and UK... wow, wouldn't it be great if we could join these up somehow... hmmm, I wonder... could we walk a bit? Surely not, it's unAustralian, isn't it?
It's not like our climate is unsuited to walking. But perhaps the government could install a few long range travelators to ease us all into it ;)
While I'm all for walking, riding bikes and public transport (and have only rarely driven a car to work in the past 5 years - or never, in earlier years when I lived in London and Hong Kong), the simple fact is that these options aren't available for everyone.
For those who really are stuck in the god-forsaken, public transport free outer suburbs (or in rural areas), they really do need cars for the time being - hybrids (and eventually electric vehicles) are a step in the right direction, so I don't see them as a worthy target of criticism - they are just one more necessary option to exercise to deal with decreasing availability of fossil fuels...
And again, people living in public transport-forsaken outer suburbs vast distances from shops and work are not the majority.
If they were, the average time driving to work would be more than 31 minutes for each trip, and the average for shopping much greater than 13 minutes. And we wouldn't find that 30% of trips are under 3km and 50% less than 5km.
As I said, we can always drag out some poor bugger as an exception. "Oh but what about the elderly legless living in Dubbo?" But they're not the majority. Why focus on them? Why not focus on the majority? The majority can change, and their change can have a significant effect - more significant than making sure your tyres are pumped up.
Let's have people look seriously at their lives and how they live them, they're quite capable of coming up with excuses for themselves, we don't have to do it for them.
Kiashu,
I think you overestimate how much public transport exists in the US. I am thinking of midwestern/great lakes area states with cities around 20-40,000 people. These places do not have viable public transit. The best most of them have is Dial-A-Ride (on-request, mini busses) which is so inconvenient as to be useless in my city. It doesn't start running early enough or stay running late enough to get you both to work and back home. You have to schedule your pick up several hours in advance, which effectively means the night before. They will not guarantee a pick up time within an hour and cannot guarantee a destination time. The only purpose of the Dial-A-Ride system is to provide disabled people a way to get around so they don't have to move into assisted living.
Because any real social change must be effective for everyone except the true outliers. It isn't good enough to have a system that works for 50% of the people, you have to have a system that works for at least 90% of the people, preferable closer to 97%. This is why bicycling doesn't work as a solution. I'm not going to ride my bike to work when it's 10F or when there's 5" of snow on the ground. And there is a large segment of the population that can't. It's not a majority, but it is too many.
A final thought. Telling someone to move is easy, and is in fact the best overall solution. However, finding a place to live that is: close to work, schools, and stores; Large enough for a family; and affordable isn't nearly as easy as we'd like it to be. Moving is expensive. I can buy a lot of $5 gas for the cost of moving, not even counting the higher mortgage and insurance payments.
--
JimFive
Not at all. Firstly, I was responding to someone talking about Australia, not the US - I am not an American. As for the US and public transport, I realise it's mostly shit. But lots of parts aren't.
My point is that many options already exist, but because people reflexively jump in their cars, they don't consider those options. My immodest proposal is that people make themselves aware of how much they use their car, and how often they're ignoring other options.
For some people, this will lead to no change at all; for most, some change.
In this case I'm not talking about social change. I'm talking about how you can save fuel. And for the vast majority of people, how much they drive is far more variable and easy to change and will have a greater effect on fuel consumption than messing about with accelerators and tyre pressure.