OK Here is the deal: this year two of my cars were hit by, well , uhmmm, my house. Not to mention my HOUSE needed to be replaced.
What a better opportunity to do something good for the environment! How often does a person have a real excuse to replace two cars and a house?
SO I was thinking, Well Maybe this is the time to go green, like i have wanted to do for a long time. Instead of getting a regular new car we could get a hybrid! We do need the van for the kid and Bill's work and we got an obscene discount on it, so we are going to get the minivan. BUT for the other one, why not get a Prius?
Then I am also a fan of this show "Living with Ed." It is a show all about the daily life of Ed Begley Jr, the actor who also lives a totally green life and his house is full of things that save the earth. He recycles rain water, he has a reverse running meter, he has tons of solar panels on his house recycled everything, electric cars. he has a wind turbine thingy on his roof.... etc HOW AWESOME I am thinking that you know.... When you have the chance to completely do over these three huge assets, maybe we could do some of this stuff right? WHY NOT get a hybrid car? WHY NOT add a bunch of green features to our new house? I would LOVE THIS: Ed Begley Jr His house is so efficient at making its own electricity or whatever that he makes more than his house can use and he actually sells it to the city and it goes back onto the power grid.
So awesome.
SO WHY CAN'T we do this?????
Uhmmm its VERY EXPENSIVE.
A Prius, (60 mpg) equally equipped as my Matrix (33 mpg) that was about $14K would have been like $28K About twice as much. Why not get a used one? I LOOKED there ARE NO used Prius cars at least not on Portland. I found ONE that was four years old with 50K miles on it, and it was $20K . We looked at other hybrids as well, like the Ford Escape Hybrid and FOrgettabout it. Same deal.
AND the way construction costs are we will be lucky to even rebuild the house we had, never mind adding things like a solar water heater etc.
We are looking into it, but it makes no sense to me that those who actually WANT to do all of this AL Gore stuff cannot do it , really, because all of this stuff and technology is so expensive. You have to be Ed Begley to this stuff and that is SAD. So at times I get frustrated and yes I TOO would like to save the earth on a grand scale but we cannot really afford to.
Bummer.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
It isn't Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
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3 comments:
I hear you on this. I try not to run the A/C in my house unless its really hot, don't run the heat very high in the winter, etc., but wish I could do more. But the Ed Begley solution is just not realistically available to most of us.
Not all environmentally reponsible things cost lots of money. YRs (and old R's) love citing expensive technology that average people cannot afford as a reason to just forget about even trying.
Not everyone can afford to attach solar panels to their house and convert their vehicles to biodeisel. So what?
You are already 'helping' by getting a Matrix, instead of a gas guzzler. [Hybrids are best for inner city driving when you are often idling (at stops and in traffic) and it can switch from gas to battery power. My parent's want one, and CAN afford one, but it does not even make environmental sense for them to get one, as they rarely drive in city traffic anymore. Also, the batteries need to be replaced, are very expensive, and cause their own recycling problems.]
Try to minimize waste, recycle when you can, eat local in-season food when you can, etc.
I am sure you already do those things and more.
Yeah You know we got the Matrix to replace the horrendous EXPEDITION which was totaled when two firemen landed on it after being thrown 15 feet out of the garage
Still really wanted a hybrid but TWICE as much? As it is, the Matrix was a 2004 with 30K miles on it. SO I KNOW we lowered our gas consumption AND we sort of recycled a car I guess.
BUT it is a bummer Here we are REBUILDING a house from teh ground up, and we cannot do anything really differently because it is so so expensive. However Bill's aprents I cannot explain them they are like REALLLLY religious {Presbyterian and his Dad is a minister BUT you know they were also kind of hippies and they do stuff like ground their own flour for bread, and use THE ROTATION DIET, and eat all this weird stuff and UNSSPROUTED this and that, and they have like plowed their entire back yard to grow their own food and stuff... and all of this stuff and they live in SO CAL ( Ventura - Billis a former surfer dude... Oh and he swam competitvely in HS and college and now HATES chlorine....
and I know they have some solar stuff on their house. SO I am thinking we could maybe ask them how to do at least some of that stuff. But I REALLLLy want one of those windmill things on my house.
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