Category: gasoline

One Car Experiment Update: Month 3

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Ugh rain!!!! I was loving our one-car status until the winter rain hit.

As a native Californian, I appreciate the rain. We always need it. But the last few winters have been very dry. Not this one!

How do people bike in the rain? I know there are people who live in cities with real weather who bike all the time, but nothing makes me want to jump in a car like a little precipitation. I found a great website with info about biking in the rain, and if it were just me on a bike I might invest in all the clothing they recommend, however, I don’t feel like it’s safe asking my little one to bike in the rain. Guess we’ll be doing a lot of Uber!

Not giving up on being a one-car family yet, but I didn’t just do some research on cars.

Please share your thoughts/advice on biking in wet weather below!

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Why corn ethanol isn’t the answer to global warming

There has been a lot of hype surrounding corn ethanol and we just want to help get the truth out. Bottom line? Corn ethanol will not significantly reduce carbon emissions and therefore won’t significantly affect global warming. Also, the production of corn ethanol is petroleum-fuel-intensive so it also doesn’t really help America “relieve our dependence on foreign oil” (as is so often stated by politicians.) Studies show it takes 7 gallons of gasoline to produce 8 gallons of corn ethanol.

So why is it being pushed? Because big corporate agriculture businesses have long benefited from corn subsidies and if the country becomes dependent on corn ethanol the profits will come rolling in. And once the corn ethanol infrastructure gets put in place, those businesses know that it will take forever to change over to a better alternative fuel…and there are much better ethanol fuel options out there such as hemp and switchgrass to name two. Although, in our humble opinion, the absolute best solution would be electric cars powered by a solar or wind-fed energy grid (zero emissions.)

Also, corn ethanol doesn’t make sense is because it is such a prevalent ingredient in foods (think about everything that has high fructose corn syrup) that as food companies compete with fuel companies for the limited corn crop available the price for corn ethanol will quickly rise.

Click here:
-To read more about why corn ethanol isn’t the panacea it seems.
-To sign a petition to push Ford and GM away from promoting corn ethanol.
-To check out this succinct cartoon about the fallacy of biofuels

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