CarFreeWithKids and BusChick ask: what do you do about friends in the burbs if you don't have a car?

We're actually on the other end of this dilemma (sort of). I love being in a small, locally dense, town, but to our friends in the city, we may as well be in a sprawling suburban development.

We realize that, most of the time, we'll have to do the driving to see our friends. We understand that our friends didn't count on having to make frequent trips out here when they planned their lives. When we go into the city for any reason, we try to visit someone while we're there, to get the most out of each trip. Often, we try to meet half way (literally). Drumlin farm is a favorite, but it's not really accessible without a car, so it doesn't help if your friends are truly car free. But there are some nice spots on the commuter rail that would work. Hopkington State Park is close to the Worcester line and accessible to most anywhere "MetroWest." Many of the commuter rail stops are in nice town centers where it could be fun to meet for an extended lunch.

That said, it does hurt when folks won't make the trip out here for big events. We haven't black listed anyone, but when we are in the city, looking for someone to meet up with at the last moment, we're more likely to call folks who've made the effort to come out here. It's not out of spite as much as who would be more likely to want us to crash their plans.

My philosophy with most things related to self improvement is that I'm going to start with the easy stuff. I look for changes that will make the biggest difference with the least impact on folks I care about. Cut out short car trips. Try eating 25% of the meat you used to. Set a limit ($10 a week?) on non-local produce. I had a similar philosophy when Mandy was pregnant. The stress of avoiding every last source of danger to the baby was worse for the baby than anything. Yeah, don't smoke or drink, but if one snack of raw milk cheese is going to improve your mood, it is probably worth the risk.

Stressing yourself out about your carbon footprint isn't going to hurt the environment. (It may shorten your life, which would lower your lifetime footprint.) But it may alienate folks and let them continue to see climate change as a cause for nutjobs. If you can cut out 75% of your footprint without affecting the way you interact with others, maybe you can inspire more people to make changes in their lives.

I'm all for some folks going car-free or vegan, but most people are going to see that and turn away. There also needs to be a moderate movement with less drastic changes that includes more people. That way folks who are just starting to think green, can do something positive from the outset.

Everyone changing to CFLs isn't going to save the planet, but everyone cutting their meat consumption by 75%, their car use by 50%, and their electricity by 30% (to pick completely arbitrary, but achievable numbers) just might have a huge impact.

There is a good article in the Washington Post that covers much of the same ground.

Another good TedTalk

Shai Agassi's talk at TED this February, presented his vision for how we could make electric cars feasible now and why it's the best way to go now. He's not the most amazing speaker, but there are quite a few good ideas in here.

The key idea of the whole thing, and the idea behind BetterPlace, is swapping batteries instead of charging them. If automated, it could be quicker than fueling up a gas car. It starts to make the electric car pretty appealing.

The rest of the talk is a rambling mix of tales of his attempts to get governments to buy into his vision and more reasons why we need to make the switch to electric. One bit I liked was his a recounted conversation with someone from the Israeli government in which he proposed turning some large tract of land into a solar farm that would power all the cars in the country. His point was that they'd not hesitate if that same piece of land held enough oil to run those cars for some number of years. The solar power would never run out. I really like that point of view for setting aside large tracts of land for solar.

Not just a back-seat driver

I heard a great quote about cars recently:

"The car is like your mother-in-law. You have to have [a] good relationship with her, but she cannot command your life. ... When the only woman in your life is your mother in law, you have a problem."

This is from Jaime Lerner's talk at TED 2007. If you haven't seen any TED talks, I recommend them. Here are some of my favorites. It's an annual conference that gives smart people a chance to talk about whatever they want. It's a bit smug and elitist, but they do a pretty good job of defining smart very loosely and getting some really interesting speakers. There are talks by folks you've heard of (Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, Frank Gehry, and more) and many you instantly want to know more about. Topics range from the environment, to education, to poverty, to the frontiers of science (the LHC, the ocean, space, medicine, ...), to entertainment.

From their about page:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Run your car on water!!! Not really, no.

One of the adds that popped up in gmail while sending out baby pics was to a web site that claimed you could run your car on water. I've always had a passing interest in perpetual motion machines and other claims that violate the laws of thermodynamics and everyone was napping, so I took the bait.

It is certainly oversold and borders on fraudulent, but it may very well improve the efficiency of your car. I'm still skeptical of those claims, but not on scientific ground, just on the level of hucksterism on the web page.

Lets start with the claim. Using just tap water, their system creates a special gas that can be burnt with gasoline in your engine. They have some fancy name for this gas. It is simply a mixture of Hydrogen gas and Oxygen gas in exactly the proportion needed to make water. This is done by pumping electric current through the water. It's a pretty well known process that may have been demonstrated in your high-school chemistry class, if your teacher, like our beloved Mr Merriweather, liked to blow things up.

The problem is that the energy needed for electrolysis is the same as the heat released when gas mixture is burned. Even worse, it is impossible to turn all the heat back into usable energy. So "Run your car on water!" is complete hogwash.

There are two points that might bail them out, however, since the fine print really only claims improved efficiency. First, the added hydrogen may improve the efficiency of the gasoline combustion by some process that I don't understand. The chemistry is beyond me, but I doubt its a big gain.

Second, and more significant, using the extra current from the alternator to build a reserve of hydrogen is analogous to the way earlier hybrids store energy in batteries to later boost the engine via an electric motor. This system is worse in that the combustion of hydrogen is less efficient than recovering energy from a battery and you probably don't have regenerative brakes on your car. On the other hand, the stored hydrogen won't leak energy and the system probably weighs less than the batteries and electric motor.