About cars

Crunchy Chicken posted today about whether higher gas prices are a good or bad thing.

This is a tough one for us. Our "family car" is a 94 Chevy Astro van that we bought used 10 years ago. It gets about 20 mpg in the summer. At that time we planned on having a big family and would be needing the room. That indeed happened. We have 5 kids, so the 8 seats in the van definitely get utilized. At one point, we had 3 kids in car seats, though we are down to 2 now. We also have a 180-mile round trip every other week for visitations with my oldest daughter who lives with her father. This was murder on the pocketbook.

Last year we used our tax refund to pay cash for a used 99 Mazda Protegé. The gas mileage (when it is only being used for the trip to get my daughter) is around 35 mpg in the summer. Winter is harder on the gas mileage since we have to leave vehicles to warm up (especially the van) before we go anywhere or else the cars complain.

The Mazda only has 5 seats. It won't fit our whole family, so if we go anywhere as a family, we have to take the van. The van is going through some trials right now (over 200k miles on it), and we are trying to decide if we should keep putting money into it and hope it lasts as long as we can afford gas, or if we should replace it. But with what shall we replace it? Financing a $20k hybrid car is completely out of the realm of the most remote possibility. I suggested an old station wagon, the kind that has the extra back seat that flips up and faces backwards, but I haven't seen one of those in, well, probably decades. My husband suggested a small pickup truck. Yes, it would mean we have to take both vehicles to go somewhere as a family, but really, we don't make long distance trips as a family very often. He also said that when gasoline is prohibitively high, we can pull the engine out and convert it into a horse- or ox-drawn cart. I don't know how plausible that is, but it is intriguing. We shall await the prognosis on the van right now.

Another letter to my Congressman

Even though my Congressman doesn't seem to read my emails, I am not giving up. I have written a new one with a practical band-aid solution for him to consider. If you would like to copy this and send it to your Senator or Congressman, please feel free.

Dear Mr. Hodes,

I am writing to you today to suggest a simple way to help folks control their heating costs this winter. My idea is to replace current thermostats with ones whose range is 40-70 instead of 55-90. It would be like the revision of speedometers in the 70s. If we include education on the benefits of wearing layered clothing and keeping our thermostats lower, we can reduce the amount of fuel needed to keep people warm this winter. A lower highest temperature will also help prevent accidental adjustments to high temperatures. Bumping the thermostat or a child's playing with one will no longer be able to turn one's home into a tropical jungle at 90 degrees. I would like to see Congress provide incentives to companies to make these low-range thermostats and encourage homeowners to install them.

Since the technology already exists, there should be no expensive retrofitting required for their manufacture, and most homeowners are competent enough to replace a simple thermostat, and if they are not, it is a simple matter for their energy company to do so.

Thank you for reading my idea.

Sincerely,
Judy Anderson

Civilization

I'm trying to post a video I saw. Let's see if this works.



I hope you enjoy it. Requested updates on the kids coming soon.

Write to your Representatives

Here is the letter that I just sent to my Congressman. Feel free to copy it, personalize it, and send it off to your own representative.

Dear Mr. Hodes,

Ms. Shea-Porter recently sent out a survey to her constituents regarding energy prices and I wished to address this issue with you as one of your constituents.

I understand that everyone is focusing on our need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but I think we are missing the point, which is that we should be reducing our dependence on all oil, foreign or domestic. Instead of pouring money into the bottomless pit of oil exploration and development, we should instead focus on helping people transition to a low-energy lifestyle, where the price of oil will be mostly irrelevant since we won't need it anymore. As I see it, trying to be more self-sufficient for our oil needs is like the drug addict who tries to produce their own drugs instead of seeking a rehabilitation center. Instead of more drilling, we need to create an oil-addiction rehabilitation system.

We can encourage people to save energy at night by going to bed earlier instead of sitting up watching 24-hour television. We can encourage people to purchase well-built American-made products that will last instead of cheap plastic from China that will break within a month of purchase. We need to rebuild a new, sustainable economy out of the ashes of this destructive one that is dying before our eyes. We need to allow the price of oil to rise to the point that everyone finds ways out of necessity to do without it.

Please don't waste our time and effort trying to keep our addictions fed. Instead, use our resources to help us make the inevitable transition so that we don't crash, so that we can learn the skills we will need now while we can still afford to make learning mistakes instead of when those mistakes mean the difference between life and death.

Respectfully yours,
Judith Anderson