Month: August 2013

Idling Engines Wasting Fuel–Is this REALLY always necessary?

I have noticed a seemingly increasing unnecessary and wasteful act in the general public today. It is the increasing tendency to allow vehicles to idle for moments on end. A reason I can overlook an idling vehicle: A hot day where senior citizens with breathing problems are an issue or anyone else with one for that matter where excessive heat may exacerbate a breathing condition. OR, the opposite in cold weather conditions or emergencies like being stranded, where heat or cooling may be necessary for staying alive! After this I have to ask why I see–mostly young people on the kind of beautiful days where you would love to park under a tree, roll the windows down, read and enjoy a breeze–sealed up in a vehicle letting it run?

In a nation where we are destroying the environment for the sake of oil and gas energy which will be mostly used in an economy to produce excessive  “STUFF” we simply do NOT need, the last thing we should be doing is something like this. Every little bit of energy wasted simple contributes to the total sum of energy used and wasted for no legitimate reason. Additionally, allowing engines to idle for moments and hours, simply contributes to the conditions that result in weather extremities from which we are trying to shelter ourselves to begin with!

I would have thought we would have already learned such environmental ABC’s and basics in the 70’s, but it seems we have all but forgotten, and need to be trained all over again. And, this kind of collective waste that adds up to be a lot does not stop here…two other most preventable forms of energy waste are the use of plastic shopping bags and littering! But, these are stories that need separate attention. Maybe in a future post.

Meanwhile, to those young people with NO health issues sitting in cars letting them idle for moments at a time, get off your rear ends and out of the car–and go for a walk! Don’t become a future drain on healthcare or the environment!

Posted by Angry Man In The Basement at 11:02 AM 2 comments:

Hey Media…Stop being a PR Conduit for the Oil and Gas Industry!

Below, is a letter I sent to a reporter, or should I say “repeater” who is one of the thousands who have become a whore to the oil and gas industry:

Dear sir, I have worked with stream ecology for many years. The damage to our water from fracking is clear. Why would Dick Cheney, in ’05 push to ram through an energy bill that EXCLUDED the oil and gas industries from the federal clean water laws? Why? Because they knew this degree of fracking would indeed greatly harm water resources, When you pollute ground water, which fracking can and does, that’s it..water is pretty much ruined. It will be the tax payers who bare the cost of this problem in the future if it ever becomes addressed at all. All people hear is industry and chamber driven information about this activity.

The unreported harms and horror stories have been for years an continue to be covered up by a powerful oil and gas lobby/influence. The paper’s job is to seek the facts as best as we know them and this means not just regurgitating to an ill-informed and gullible public what industry gurus and those who will financially benefit, want us to hear. Any economic benefit from this procedure is short lived, serves a few, yet will bare a far greater cost and impact down the road. We will look back someday and wonder what in the hell were we thinking?

What have we become as a society when we reach the point we are willing to throw our own Mother into a pot of boiling water, think that it is OK, just because a few people make a few bucks for a short time. There are many other cleaner ways to develop a sustainable economy and reduce dependency on oil or foreign energy, and this is NOT one of them contrary to a desperate and demoralized public largely in denial is duped into believing.

It is time to Stop this insanity. We do not need this energy as it is mostly being used to sustain things we simply do NOT need in what has become an insatiable 24 hour FAT MART society of sick people! Stop listening to the hype, marketing and PR of the oil and gas industry and start reporting the unheard story they do not want the public to hear. This IS after-all, a true democratic media’s responsibility.

Posted by Angry Man In The Basement at 10:44 AM No comments: