“I simply cannot understand how anyone who is intelligent can look in the faces of their children (our future), and not understand this [reducing our reliance on fossil fuels].”

Perhaps the silver lining is that this catastrophe has caused people to rethink the concept of “Drill, Baby, Drill” and to question the assurances of oil executives and Republicans that “modern oil drilling is safe”

It’s back to basics:
energy conservation,
increasing fuel efficiency of cars,
making gasoline expensive so people don’t just hop in their car and drive down to the market for a carton of eggs.

The goal should be to USE LESS not DRILL FOR MORE

They’ve been doing this in Japan and Europe for years

What boggles my mind is that with all the backlash towards oil companies over the last few years and finally getting new oil drilling despite it, you would think oil companies would go to extraordinary measures of safety redundancies so that nothing like this happens & blows the political situation up even worse. It is like throwing gasoline on a fire!

What boggles my mind is that with all the backlash towards oil companies over the last few years and finally getting new oil drilling despite it, you would think oil companies would go to extraordinary measures of safety redundancies so that nothing like this happens & blows the political situation up even worse. It is like throwing gasoline on a fire!

This effort proved to me that there are solutions available “today” to reduce oil consumption that don’t cost an arm and a leg, or require a significant change in lifestyle.

All I hear from everyone is “excuses” why they “have” to drive vehicles that use more oil. The difference is “want” verses “need”. In addition you must add to the equation “impact”

It’s great to want a vehicle that goes fast, or has a convertible top, or can carry 8 passengers, or can tow 10,000 lbs. But….

What if you would have to sacrifice one family member in a foreign war in order to drive a convertible? How bad do you want that convertible now?

When you put it into those terms is very easy to distinguish a want from a need.

Unfortunately most Americans will never factor in the impact of their decision when purchasing a vehicle. The only impact they measure is the impact is on their wallet…..So the only real way to get them to think about it is to implement policies, taxes etc. that hit Americans in their wallet every time.

No, there are several.

Ethanol. Biodiesel. Methane.

All we need are vehicles that allow us to use them.

http://www.greencar.com/articles/fiat-siena-tetrafuel-offers-flexfuel-times-four.php

We need to mandate that all new vehicles sold in the US be biofuel and methane capable.

http://www.greencar.com/articles/fiat-siena-tetrafuel-offers-flexfuel-times-four.php

Let consumers choose what fuel they want to run their vehicles with. Most will choose methane—it costs about 1/2 as much to drive the same distance with methane as it does with gasoline.

We have MANY choices about biofuels. We have choices of ways to make them, what we can make them from, and how we use them.

But we do not have any choices at all if we remain chained to petroleum because we remain locked to petroleum by our vehicles.