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Go green. That slogan is all the buzz these days. You’ve heard and read the eco-friendly mantras of recycling, re-using and reducing your carbon footprint. Somehow “going green” manages to find its way into many forms of media everyday. Going green and being ecologically friendly seems to be on the minds of many people in a time of economic downturn.
You don’t have to look any further than what’s going on in the oil and gas market. While the price of oil and gas is out of control, I won’t be one-dimensional and point the finger solely at big oil companies and OPEC, although I do have an axe to grind with them.
Factors such as the declining value of the dollar (the price of oil per barrel is figured in U.S. dollars), a decreased number of refineries and tight EPA restrictions on energy exploration all play into the price we pay at the pump. How un-eco-friendly is that? Un-economically friendly, that is.
I’m all for finding alternative fuel sources for the vehicles we drive. Goodness, as I wrote this, I was sitting in a Boeing 757 at 34,000 feet going 500 mph somewhere over the Dakotas headed toward Portland, Ore. Think of all the jet fuel used to transport roughly 200 passengers and crew.
With the cost of fossil fuels going into orbit, it’s no wonder Aloha Airlines, ATA, and SkyBus all filed for bankruptcy last week. It doesn’t take an aeronautical engineer to understand why, as reported in last Friday’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Northwest Airlines announced they would cut the number of domestic flights by 5 percent at the end of the peak travel season.
There has to be some fuel source to make those big metal tubes with wings be more ecologically and economically friendly. That’s just good stewardship of the resources we have.
However, are bio-fuels really the answer to a “greener” planet? Maybe for large-scale transportation for planes and cargo ships, if bio-fuels were more cost-effective to produce than E-85. There’s no way I would put E-85 in my car.
Ethanol might be more green for the environment, but burning up part of the food chain to make sure I can drive to work and take my kids to school makes my face turn green from being sick of hearing about corn-based fuels as the wave of the future.
I’d much rather see electric or solar-powered vehicles. Then again, how economically friendly are those options over the long term? Think of the cost of maintenance for batteries and solar panels.
No thanks, I’ll stick to my gas-powered car that gets 36 mpg on the highway until something more ecologically and economically friendly appears.
Perhaps soon we’ll echo Kermit the Frog singing, “It’s not easy being green.”
Columnist Tim Gray, a West Salem resident, can be reached at tim.gray.matter@gmail.com.
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