It's Fixed in the Next Release - Environment

RIP, SUV: Gas Prices Are "Getting There"

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:44:50 -0500

This weekend the Toronto Star announced the death of the SUV. One of the reasons this came up has to be the closing of the General Motors truck assembly line in Oshawa. It seems that as the price of gas gets above about $1.25 per litre (or $4/gallon in the U.S.), the number of people who "need" an unsafe gas guzzling SUV drops off pretty quickly. Now these same people "need" to unload their luxury land barges. There's nothing like a flexible definition of needs.

This is a good start. There's going to be a lot fewer road trips in the family road boat this year. Some people will argue that this is a bad thing, that families should be able to get out there with their kids to see all that this vast country has to offer. These people haven't actually seen a family in one of these vehicles. The parents are happily enjoying their time "together" while each kid is in their own isolated space with individual DVD players and noise-reducing headphones. They see as much of the countryside in their basements. Besides, a lot of travel options remain open. Our geography is every bit as dramatic from a train. Better yet, on a train it's a lot easier to get your kids to come out of their multimedia shells and look at something without risking a major accident.
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Earth Hour: Little More than a Message

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:42:38 -0500

Earth Hour has come and gone. Overall it was pretty successful: the statistic I heard was that electricity consumption in Ontario was down by 8%.

What does that mean? From a pragmatic viewpoint, not a hell of a lot. From a political viewpoint, it's pretty significant. I don't have the numbers that project the percentage of the population that participated, based on an 8% reduction, but I'll guess it's somewhere between 15% and 25%.

That's a lot of people sending a message. At this point it seems the big environmental problem is politicians. Most individuals get it, most corporations get it, but the politicians, who can actually manage the process of real change, just aren't there yet.

Maybe having as many as one in four voters demonstrate their commitment to change through Earth Hour will be enough to wake them up. I'm not holding my breath though.
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Online Shopping versus Traditional Shopping

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:36:49 -0600

It's interesting how often the question of online versus traditional shopping comes up. A friend asked me this earlier today and I gave him the same answer I've been providing for a decade now.

These days the response seems reasonable, but back in 1998 it was heresy. It used to be guaranteed to make a room full of start-ups and venture capitalists go dead quiet. Of course back then we were in the middle of the dot-com boom, when somehow geeks who don't like daylight managed to convince everyone that their concept of a good shopping experience was somehow universal.

So here it is:
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The Future of the Gardiner Expressway

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:37:00 -0500

Last month the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (TWRC) released a report on dealing with the Gardiner Expressway an ageing elevated highway that cuts through the centre of downtown Toronto and pretty universally regarded as an eyesore.

In general it's a well reasoned report, but it's striking for its continuing embrace of car culture.
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SUV Culture 1

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:26:00 -0500

Ever hear someone rationalize their purchase of a gas-guzzling SUV as something they did to protect the safety of their kids? I hear that all the time. It's delusional, and here's why...

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Fighting Global Warming is Too Expensive. WHAT??

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:19:36 -0500

The "can't quite grasp the concept" set continues to argue that the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to fight global warming is just too high.

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The True Cost of Commuting

nospam@example.com (Alan Langford) — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 17:27:00 -0600

Every time I see a freeway full of cars, I get angry. Aside from the environmental issues, which should get everyone riled up, I see a great mass of human brain power devoted to nothing. I see lost productivity. By lost productivity I mean not only in the traditional economic sense, but lost time. Time to spend with family and friends; time to play, to create. The "human capital" that we squander in service of our automotive fetish is astronomical. It's just an extra bonus that we're doing grave damage to the planet at the same time.

In the Greater Toronto Area alone, I wouldn't be surprised if we squander a million person-hours per day getting from home to work and back. If we say that this applies to a population base of roughly five million, extrapolate that to a North American population of 300 million, we come up with a cool 60 million hours. Of course, Toronto has legendary problems with traffic congestion, so let's be conservative. Divide by two and call it 150 million as a ballpark estimate for average. If everyone chose to work those hours, using an eight hour day, that represents a workforce of almost 19 million. Of course given the choice, probably 15 million of those would choose to watch television, but that still leaves four million to do valuable things, like think and create, to contribute to society. Even if my estimates are way out of whack, that's a lot.

Clearly there's a huge indirect payoff to building better, faster mass transit systems with comfortable environments that allow people to do something other than play human sardine. Then at least while you're stuck in motion, you have a chance of getting some work done instead of focusing on not getting in an accident. Is this likely to happen? No. Government policies seem to enshrine -- if not deify -- car culture. Support of the automotive sector is taken for granted as "the engine of the economy", when it's really an engine of decay. But trying to change this is tantamount to tilting at windmills, particularly since the capital investment required would probably be in the trillions.