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Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008, biggest drop in 66 years
- orib 18y agoWhat the green lobby can't do, it looks like economic pressures might be able to do. It's a pity that the gas prices will probably drive higher usage of cheap coal, instead of more environmentally friendly alternatives like geothermal, wind, solar, and (dare I say it) most practically, nuclear. Edit: Interesting typo in the article -- it seems that this month's usage was actually less than this month's usage.
- xlnt 18y agoWho's fault is it that we don't have more nuclear plants?
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- froo 18y agoI'm going to lay the blame fairly and squarely on the Simpsons. Seriously. The show is the only mass market show that I can think of that is continually giving nuclear power (in general) a bad reputation and because of its popularity amongst young people, it is helping to prevent the adoption of nuclear power, even though the technology is much safer than earlier implementations.
- xlnt 18y agoI'm going to have to blame the schools, then. Anyone who bases their view of nuclear power on The Simpsons obviously needed a better education. ;p
- xlnt 18y agoI'm going to have to blame the parents, then. They sent their children to schools that bad. :(
- tungstenfurnace 18y agoI'm going to have to blame blaming. It's the opposite of problem solving.
- jonknee 18y agoI think Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have a lot more to do with it.
- Oompa 18y agoI think so too, but it shouldn't. Chernobyl was deemed unsafe by the US before it was even built, and Three Mile Island didn't hurt a single citizen, and I believe killed no one.
- Zev 18y agoThere's a few nuclear power plant on Long Island that never got started due to Three Mile Island :\. Also, Brookhaven has a few nuclear reactors for research purposes that are still used as well. In the late 60's or early 70's, they (the power company, now known as LIPA, but this was before NY State took over) started to constructed a commercial nuclear power plant. It was originally supposed to output ~550 Megawatts of power and cost ~75 million to make. Then it got delayed. They went back to planning stages and increased the output to over 800 Megawatts as well as designing plans for another two reactors. However, one reactor was close to Manhattan. That one never got past planning stages due to protests. The other one never got built either. I'm not sure why. Anyway, by the end of the 70's, the cost of the original plant had skyrocketed to over $2 billion. And it wasn't even finished yet. Then there were protests due to Three Mile Island. By the mid 80's, the plant was complete. However, politics deemed that it would never be opened. So they spent another $250 million to decommission the plant. It cost around 6 billion in total. And a few years back, anyone remember the big blackout that happened? Power grid got overloaded. There's a cable that runs under the LI Sound now that draws power from Connecticut's nuclear power plant. Around 330 Megawatts of power. By comparison, the unused nuclear power plant on Long Island - that's still connected to the power grid - is supposed to be able to produce around 400 Megawatts of power. Oh, and we (the taxpayers) are still paying the bill for that unused power plant. And will be for the next 15 years. Wiki has a good writeup on this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant
- time_management 18y agoThis is good news, but we still have the idiotic habit of using airplanes for mid-distance travel, due to the lack of a decent train system.
- ars 18y agoThat's fixing itself too - airplanes are so unreliable that people are using them less and less. That plus security checking, long lines, drive to the airport; and flying takes about as long as driving. Hmm, what's better: fly, together with a bunch of people, or drive all by yourself? Anyway, you'll see a lot of airlines go bust this coming year - unless they start offering on-time guarantees.
- time_management 18y agoOn-time guarantees will never happen, given the miserable shape the airlines are already in. This would further increase their costs. I was stuck on the tarmac at Amsterdam's airport for 8 hours and got a EUR 50 voucher from Northwest Airlines toward a future ticket (yeah, right). I tore it up in front of the woman, and told her that anything less than a free ticket was an insult. This was in 2003, and if airlines weren't going to offer on-time guarantees then, they certainly won't do so now. Frankly, I don't think it's high oil that is hurting the airlines, because they can (and almost certainly do) hedge against this by buying oil futures. I think the collapse of demand for first-class and last-minute seats is hurting them. The fussy rich people who used to demand 1st class, and were willing to pay 4x the regular price for 50% more space, now prefer to fly chartered or private planes. If you have a pilot's license, taking a family of four in a small plane is comparable in cost to 1st-class commercial. Also, the growth of videoconferencing is causing a massive decline in short-notice business travel, formerly a source of demand for overpriced late tickets.
- eru 18y agoThose future hedges will cost a lot more if the market expects oil prices to rise.
- sysop073 18y ago"US citizens drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008 than in May 2007, or 3.7% less. Yet May usually means an increase in traffic because of Memorial Day vacations and the beginning of summer." I don't think Memorial Day being in May means May this year has an increase in traffic over May last year, that would've only made sense if they compared April and May
- time_management 18y agoYeah, I coughed when I read this too. The reason a May-over-May comparison is made is to take out the seasonality; Memorial Day is irrelevant to May08/May07 (or, as they would say in finance, 07K-08K).
- jcl 18y agoThe confusion is due to selective quoting of the article's source: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/07/us-vehicle-mile.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/07/us-vehicle-mile.html ...which says that not only are we seeing a drop compared to last year, but we are also seeing month-by-month drops, which is unusual because May has historically been an "up" month.
- mikeatlas 18y agoThe American government could have put a $3 tax on gas when it was $1, and the consumption would have dropped and all those oil profits could have been invested in renewable domestic energy development. People would have screamed bloody murder then, but they're screaming now anyways. 20-20 hindsight.
- soundsop 18y agoBut their anger would have been directed at the government rather than the oil companies, as it is now.
- Prrometheus 18y agoYou certainly have more faith in the effectiveness of social engineering than I do.
- newt0311 18y agoUmm... Supply and demand works... Not much in the way of news.
- apollo 18y agoEconomics. It works, bitches.
- stcredzero 18y agoThe other day my girlfriend, who is of Louisiana Creole extraction, commented: "I've never seen so many white people on bicycles!" We live in Houston, and it used to be that most of the bicyclists you see in my neighborhood are Black and Hispanic guys who have to get to work but can't afford a car.
- rokhayakebe 18y agoGreat. Can someone raise the gas price to 5 dollars. Sure my milk will be more expensive, but it will force more people to work from home instead of going to an office to drink coffee and take smoke breaks.