Men Free Blog

If residents in several cities in Clark County, Washington want to get their cars clean, they could soon be forced to do it at retail car washes. According to an employee at the Washington state Department of Ecology, the state wants “people to make the connection of ‘what goes on the street goes into the creek.’” And soapy car wash residue is something they don’t want in the creek.

The state wants the cities to come up with a way to keep any water that isn’t rain water from getting into the environment without being treated. The cities, about a dozen in all, say that’s crazy, and have threatened to sue the state for trying to enact measures that exceed federal Clean Water Act.

The state suggests that if people still want to clean their cars, that they don’t use soap with phosphorus, and wash their cars on gravel or grass where the water will be filtered by the soil. That’s ironic, because part of the state’s measure also requires sprinkler water to be captured and treated. Residents could always try the state’s other option: don’t use soap at all.

Interesting article in the New York Times this morning, about a subject we’ve all been hearing about a lot: the environmental effects of global food shipping. Not only are we eating food imported from far away places when it’s unavailable or not in season here, but we’re actually shipping lemons from Argentina to the citrus-rich south of Spain, sending Norwegian cod to China to be made into fillets and shipped back to Norway again. And we’re starting to pay the cost in terms of global warming from the carbon emissions from all that shipping.

So maybe it’s time to pay the financial cost as well, some economists say, in the form of taxes and carbon offsets for shippers and shoppers alike. While neither airplanes or ocean freighters are currently taxed for fuel used for international travel and transport of good, many people think it’s time to end these tax breaks.

Well, that doesn’t sound like a bad plan to me, but the question of imported foods and carbon emissions still present a conundrum for those of us who really love to eat (I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in any 100-mile diet that doesn’t involve chocolate or coffee) and care about the environment. How do you green foodies out there deal with this issue?
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The Big Predictions for the Future have begun. This is the numbers game where eye-popping numerical targets start being thrown around before we’ve come anywhere close to achieving the eyebrow raising targets that are still 14 years away. According to Margo Oge at the EPA, the CAFE standard will need to jump to 75-MPG by the 2030s to meet greenhouse targets.

There is, somewhere, a “widely backed scientific-community proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 80 percent by 2050 from 2000 levels.” Based on current realities, the EPA has reckoned that the fleet average for fuel economy would need to more than double from the 2020 target of 35 mpg in about 15 or so years in order to achieve even the minimum standard.

The EPA is looking at a variety of alternative fuel options as a way to make the plan work. Yet we have no idea whether this is being looked at as a serious long term plan, or whether grand pronouncements are being made because it’s the thing to do right now. While we freely admit that the world of cars could use some cleaning up, we do wonder… is any other industry going to be on the hook for reducing greenhouse gasses?
[Source: Detroit News]

The Big Predictions for the Future have begun. This is the numbers game where eye-popping numerical targets start being thrown around before we’ve come anywhere close to achieving the eyebrow raising targets that are still 14 years away. According to Margo Oge at the EPA, the CAFE standard will need to jump to 75-MPG by the 2030s to meet greenhouse targets.

There is, somewhere, a “widely backed scientific-community proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 80 percent by 2050 from 2000 levels.” Based on current realities, the EPA has reckoned that the fleet average for fuel economy would need to more than double from the 2020 target of 35 mpg in about 15 or so years in order to achieve even the minimum standard.

The EPA is looking at a variety of alternative fuel options as a way to make the plan work. Yet we have no idea whether this is being looked at as a serious long term plan, or whether grand pronouncements are being made because it’s the thing to do right now. While we freely admit that the world of cars could use some cleaning up, we do wonder… is any other industry going to be on the hook for reducing greenhouse gasses?

[Source: Detroit News]