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Americans are inextricably tied to their automobiles! It is the inalienable
right of every American to be nomous & .
This page is dedicated to the dark side of driving - traffic! As the supply of
oil becomes more scarce, traffic increases at over 5% annually. This is comparable
to binge eating during a famine.
Gas Stations.com, along with the petroleum industry itself, is concerned
and wants to do our part to bring about an awareness that helps everyone involved.
- There's gas in our food!
- Gas in our food? What do you mean?
Take, for example, a bag of lettuce in a grocery store. The ground was plowed
with a diesel tractor and taken to market in a gas powered truck. When the lettuce
arrives at the packaging plant it is run through electric packaging machines(quite
possibly getting their electricity from an oil fueled power plant) and placed
in a plastic bag (plastic is a petrochemical - made from oil).
The lettuce
is then loaded onto a refrigerated diesel truck (even when they are
parked they burn fuel to run the refrigerators)to go to the retail outlets.
I saved the best for last! Many farmers and ago-conglomerates use
petroleum
based fertilizers. So yes, it literally is in our food.
Apply this same logic to any food. The price of gas is hidden in your food?
We are a petrarchy (I just made the word up) -
a society ruled by petroleum!
...to try to find the cause of our national gridlock at rush hour. After much
time in the field and many taxpayer dollars spent, they returned with their findings.
The reason for our traffic problem is: Too many cars! Nice going, Einstein!!
The scientists at the
Los Alamos Lab are working on the traffic problem as we speak. The A-Bomb came
out of that lab. If they can't fix it maybe they'll nuke it!
But seriously folks - Some amazing facts about our growing
traffic problem.
- US drivers
burn an average 192 million gallons of gas daily.
- There are 8.2 million lane miles of roadway in the US to burn it
on.
- Annually, American drivers collectively log over 2.5 trillion
miles.
- People who, years ago, moved way out of the city for a more attractive mortgage
rate are spending up to a month or more of every year of their lives.in traffic
to get there.
- Ah, but herein lies the rub: that mortgage the mortgage
is still cheap but now he spends $1200.00 a month on gas.
- Since 1973 the US has spent over 1.3 trillion dollars on foreign gas.
- In a year a new
car emits:
- 15,200 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- 420 pounds of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere.
- The gasoline engine, worldwide, is the leading contributor to the global
warming threat.
- 120 million
people drive to work every day
- 102 million drive it alone.
As gas prices continue to climb, there will be a variety of possible solutions.
One is the revitalization
of the inner city to encourage employees to live closer to work and have
access to mass transit. Americans are obviously more spread out than the average
European, hence we use more gas to get to work than they do. They have been paying
high gas prices the whole time. We are just awakening from a dream and the American
Dream is powered by gas and it emits carbon dioxide!
- We are going to be forced to live closer to where we work.
- In Japan, the ultimate inner city is being planned. it is a city in the sky
- "Sky
City 1000". Rising one thousand meters in the sky (3,281
feet) one need not even own a car. No traffic at all - except in the elevators
when there is an earthquake.
- What the Dutch are doing to control their traffic.
- "In Amsterdam, for instance,
only
20 percent of people’s trips around the city are in a car; 36 percent are made on foot, another 31 percent on bikes,
and 11 percent on transit. In the Dutch city of Groningen, 47 percent of all
urban trips are on bikes, 26 percent on foot, and 23 percent by car.
But that’s not good enough for the Dutch. Alarmed by studies showing sizable
increases in traffic in the years to come, government officials have worked to
boost alternative transportation. Voters in Amsterdam approved an ambitious plan
to eliminate most automobiles in a three-square-mile section of the center city,
an idea later adopted in a number of other Dutch towns.
Increased public funding has been invested in heavy and light rail, and major employers are now required
to locate new facilities near transit stops. New housing and commercial developments
are not approved without close scrutiny of their impact on traffic congestion."
- Here's a little motivation about energy conservation.
- Use of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil
has
increased by nearly 700 percent between 1961 and 2001 - and the majority of that increase has been
in the last twenty years. After the gas crunch of the late seventies scared the
bejesus out of us we were put back to sleep by the low oil prices occurring over
the subsequent 20 years. However, there is a new alarm clock to wake us back
up - China:
After decades of watching us live "the life" off their cheap labor
they are now buying the capitalist dream and want a piece of what we so wrongly
have take for granted. China is is building automobiles like crazy - for their
own domestic market.
China is now vying for the world's
second largest importer of petroleum,
and according to the International Energy Agency, it will pass the United
States as the world's number one importer in three years.
Fuel conservation is no longer "the hip thing to do" - it is about survival.
In the not so distant future it could become a matter of not how
much you pay
for a gallon of gas but but rather can you find a gallon of gas!
Nature takes care of herself! The final word in the the carbon dioxide/global
warming debate will be running out of gas - problem solved, debate over!
- Virtual
offices will cut expenses for both the worker and the employer when proximity
is not an option.
- Car pooling
- Taking mass transit
- 4.8 million New Yorkers use mass transit daily.
- Every subway train takes 1000 cars off the road.
- Every bus takes 40 cars off the road.
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