Peg in the Machine

Here at Peg in the Machine we’re starting a campaign that we’re going to be trying in our town — and hopefully have it catch on.  It’s a “walk to work day”.  In all honesty we’re going to try and have it be “walk to work almost every day” policy, but stay tuned.

We’re planning on making the policy something done at the city and county level (meaning we’re going to try and get something setup with the politicians in the town). Basically we’re going to try and do a campaign that will cause more people to walk, potentially even getting something special from the city/county for doing so — all the while saving gas, helping the environment, and getting people in better shape….

So keep on checking back…. hopefully something good will come from it.  We’ll be posting if it does.

With gas prices rising it seems everyone’s wanting to save as much money as  they can in gas.  There’s even families that complain about having to only go on two vacations a year due to gas prices!  Oh the horror!  Only two vacations!  But seriously, it does effect many people in the United States, and really the world as everyone to one extent or another uses fossil fuels to power their cars.

Unlike all those chain letters of “don’t buy gas on day X” that really don’t do anything as unless you stop driving as much — you’re still going to be buying the same amount of gas overall.  It’s quite simple and logical despite what many seem to believe.

But it’s even simpler:  Every week, go one or two days that you don’t drive at all.  Walk to work, or even ride a bicycle if you’re afraid of stinking up the office from sweat from walking.  If you really worried about it — try to take a change of clothes with you with a little toiletry bag and get cleaned up at the office.  Every mile you don’t drive not only saves gas, but lessens the pollution, and causes you to exercise.  There’s no real downsides (unless you’re not able to walk/ride a bicycle).

If you live in a city, use the trains!  Some people fear them, others love them.  Granted there are days that you spend more time going to work (if you have to leave an hour earlier for example) and get home later, so it might not be for all.  But if you can use them — do so.  The more people wanting to use trains the more the cities will put into them – which will just make them better.  You have to decide for yourself whether or not you actually save money by taking them or if it’s just for you.

There’s only a few things you have to consider when not using a standard fossil fuel-based vehicle (car/truck/SUV) when going places:  it might take you longer to get there and to get back home.

If you take public transportation, you have to take into account the pickup times, and even the last and earliest run times.  Sometimes you might have to leave an hour early as if you get the next pickup time you’d be late.  With walking, while you can to an extent determine when you’ll arrive by your walking speed — it’s also the slowest mode of travel.  If you assume you walk 3mph, and work’s 3 miles away, you’ll have to allocate 1 hour to and from work.

One advantage to riding a bicycle is that if you’re on streets with multiple stops (or have a bike trail that might be non-stop over distances) — you might get to work in the same amount of time as it’d take while driving more or less!  Granted you’ll have to carry your bike to your office and put it in your cubical if your office doesn’t provide a secure rack, but it’d save a lot of gas and take about as much time.

What?  Don’t think a bicycle could be about as fast as driving?  Well it all depends on the roads and stops.  Ever get stopped at every stop light and realize that people walking are catching up to you at every intersection?  Same basic thing.  And of course if you have a bike trail that might be non-stop (like through a park or not on the roads) you might actually arrive quicker than if you were driving!  But it’s all a per-user and per-situation and circumstance thing.  But there are a few advantages even over not using gas or polluting:  almost no cost to get to work every day.  You’ll have general maintenance, but given the price some people pay for car tires — anything shy of having to replace the entire bicycle and you’ll be saving a large amount of money.  And you’ll get some muscular legs in the process.

So do yourself and the world a favor.  Instead of driving to work, walk, ride a bicycle or take public transportation.  And if you really must drive — try and carpool.

According to the people over at The Nature Conservancy pollution is damaging every ecosystem on the planet.

While it’d seem quite obvious, since if you put it in the air, it’ll eventually fall back down and enter the land and water.  It’s even logical that things in the air don’t recognize county, state or country borders — afterall the borders are imaginary (other than some going by rivers and such to make it easier).  So you could live in the best pollutant-free county on the planet, but if your neighbors put up so much smoke you can’t see the sky it doesn’t really matter.

That’s the one thing people always seem to forget — they talk about how the “other” countries are doing bad things to the environment like what’s being done there stays there.  We all share the same atmosphere, and more or less the same bodies of water (despite the different names — do you really see a line in the water?).  What one country does affects all the others eventually.  One day, hopefully before everyone starts to die off, people might start to realize that every country needs to inact environmental controls and standards.  It’s something that has to be worldwide.

Every day there seems to be more and more trees cut back to almost nothing. Large, lush trees that provide shade over large areas — then they trim them back so it looks like a palm tree. When did trees become some evil thing that must be “fixed”?

What’s even worse is when you see a tree completely cut down for no apparent reason other than “it was in the way” or as sometimes people say “I didn’t like cleaning up the leaves”. Huh? You chop down a tree to save you the hassel of mowing over the leaves maybe three times a year?  You mow grass once a week  and you don’t go paving over it!

Let’s take a look at trees for a moment….

• They remove up to 13 pounds of CO2 from the air a year (per tree)
• Prevents or reduces soil erosion
• Decrease noise pollution
• Can reduce utility bills by 15-50% (compared to no tree being placed)
• Can cut heating costs up to 30% (as they provide wind breaks in winter)
• Trees can produce food for humans and animals
• Some trees can be used for medicine to prevent or treat disease (such as cancer)

So why on earth would you want to remove these things?  Heating and cooling bills are through the roof.  Flooding is commonplace.  Food found in the stores is becoming contaminated.  More and more people are driving cars (thereby increasing noise and pollution).  People aren’t able to make enough to sustain their lives, seasons appear to all blend in with no real distinction (places that used to have snow and blizzards, now frequently have snowless winters [or close to it], and people wearing shorts during it).  Power plants keep on chugging out the pollutants as do our fuel plants — all polluting the atmosphere even more.

We need trees now more than ever!  Yet why is it people keep on chopping down these life-sustaining devices?

There’s just something sad when “progress” and “improvements” involve destroying nature to put up a concrete platform.  Instead of removing trees, you should be planting them.  Build your own personal forest.  The earth will thank you.

Here lately in my town, and county as well to an extent, there’s an interesting thing happening: dead grass circles and rectangles (although ovals is probably a bit more accurate than circles).

For no apparent reason, a yard with green grass all of a sudden develops a small dead patch, then it grows. Sometimes it grows outward in a circular pattern, other times it forms as a line and moves out diagonally until it forms a rectangle. But then once it hits a certain size (which varies), it stops. Everything within the spot dies — even weeds! Till in new topsoil and plant grass, it dies. Try fertilizer, it dies. Some people in the area have removed six inches of topsoil and thrown it out (I’ve seen it carried away) and filled it in with entirely new soil.

A good fix right? Nope, next year it too is dead! Think of that for a moment… soil that’s good one year is dead the next, in the exact same spot as the old dead soil. And the real strange thing is, there’s no pipes or anything under the dead spots. Nothing that would make sense. The spots are surrounded by what seems to be completely healthy grass. And it all makes me wonder, why is this happening? How is it that grass all over the place dies out in random formations – and the soil won’t sustain any life?

I know that this week I’m going to be taking a sample in to a college extension office so it can be examined — but it makes me wonder all the same. Is it the oil refinery in town that’s causing the rain to be toxic — and these spots just happen to be collecting spots for the rain water (although why in fairly standard shapes is still beyond me)? Or is it some weird geological activity that’s causing gases to rise, and it just happens to be causing the problem?

Well I sure hope it’s not the latter as that wouldn’t make me feel too comfortable about where I’m living. But what is the problem? There’s trees, about 1/10 that have lost entire branches from death, with about 1/50 trees all-but-dying…. related, or coincidence?

All I know is it’s been going on for about 4 years now…. but here lately it’s getting worse. People’s gardens aren’t growing as well as normal — some are even saying they might not get anything from the plants this year (and yes, they’ve been using fertilizer, and some even a crop-rotation of sorts [plant things in different spots]). It’s like the earth is slowly dying.

While this isn’t a political thing, nor a government thing, I put this here as once I do get an answer I’m going to act on it. And if it happens to be something related to government in any form or another — you better believe I’ll be bringing it up at all the town and city meetings around me. But I wonder…. are things like this happening other places as well?

If you’ve experienced things like this, have any suggestions, etc, please post.

UPDATE: Well…. apparently our local University Extension office doesn’t do soil testing (despite being an agriculture-based extension)… so to get it tested I have to pay….. Considering the number of spots and all, not sure when, if ever, it’ll be done now. But I’m still looking into it.

This is perhaps one of the most debated and argued points in the world.  You’ve got oil companies not really saying too much (or painting a happy picture about oil), and other organizations saying we’re close to hitting the peak or saying we’ve already peaked.  People say that we should drill everywhere for oil, put up oil rigs everyplace in the word and pump the earth dry before we say how much time is left — and they yell and complain about the environmentalists that don’t want it done.  But what it comes right down to is no one really knows.  There is no chart to see just how much oil there is left.  No asking the earth “so how much you got left?”  We have to rely on tests and known reserves.  Known reserves… that’s always the “slimy” way to avoid the question.

Oh they always seem to toss that little gem into the estimates, it’s like the phrase “the bible says so!” — once it’s uttered, nothing else matters and the conversation must stop.  Known reserves?  We could deplete the entire planet of oil, but they’ll still say “known reserves”.  You can’t go basing when to stop using something based on the unknown — especially when it’s not a renewable resource.  One day, there won’t be any left.

And here’s the worst thing about the oil:  they always use fuel as the reason.  It’s like people have it burned into their brains (perhaps the gas prices have caused this) that oil is used only for fuel.

But fuel is only one of probably thousands of things that oil is used for or in in one form or another.  Just for a few quick examples, imagine life without these things:

• Styrofoam
• Motors (for lubrication — so every motor, power generators, washing machines, etc)
• Plastic (including wiring covering)
• Asphalt
• Paint
• Vinyl
• Polyester
• Basically, almost everything we have today is either made with an oil product, relies on oil for the lubrication of machines to make the product, or relies on oil to transport the product

We’re so dependent on oil that if oil were to disappear — humans would follow shortly thereafter.  Now I don’t mean this as a “everyone will die!” but a huge percentage of humans would die as we’d be unable to transport food and lose all of our machines and power.  Anyone relying on medication would die, anyone on machines would as well.  Anyone living far away (say as far as a horse and buggy could go in a day) from the food source would die from lack of food.   While cities are frequently close to bodies of water — there wouldn’t be enough food to support the populations.

We’d be thrust back into ancient times where stone buildings were built, and steam power was used to drive things.  We couldn’t recycle existing products, nor could we really dig for new as the machines used for digging wouldn’t be able to run.  We have the technology right now to drastically offset our oil use, but we don’t use it.  Green buildings and such don’t get funding because it’s “too risky” as the expense is currently high, and no guarantee for a return (as a lower-power consuming building doesn’t make money in itself).  Just little things, even building air and electric powered cars, could drastically cut back how much oil we use.

And I know what some of you are saying “but electric cars can only go like 200 miles on a charge!!!”  If you really have over a 100 mile one-way commute to work, you should consider moving closer to your job.  That would mean you’re spending close to $32/day for gas right now (25mpg @ 200 miles = 8 gallons @ $4/gal for gas).  It also means you’d be on the road for over 3 hours a day driving at 60mph.  Most people would have a commute under 50 miles — that means you could go almost 2 days without a recharge (some could go a week or two).  And what’s the hassle of plugging in the car at night?

And using the excuse of “we have plenty [oil] left for 20-100 years!” is the worst thing to say as once it’s gone, we have nothing else.  Failure to plan now for something that isn’t an infinite resource will be humanity’s downfall.  And you know what?  If we started to develop and fund renewable resource items — we’d create more jobs.  Just think, we could save humanity, save the world — and even potentially eliminate unemployment as a side effect.

But it probably won’t happen.  People are getting too much money from oil.  And as the oil runs dry, and they keep on searching for more and more — they’ll keep on bringing in more and more money.  They’ll get rich, humans will die.  All the money in the world can’t help you if civilization dies.  But the rich oil tycoons will be remembered — they’ll be the first ones to “accidentally” die when the oil runs out.