As a followup to my previous post concerning President Obama making an attempt to satisfy our need for fuel consumption. I found this little graphic on Jalopnik.com. Jalopnik is just like my blog, but there’s a team of people that contribute to the site. (I wish I had that.)
Anyway, this graphic seems to suggest we Americans consume gas like I do with liquor at the end of finals week. For those of you reading my blog, Iowa is pretty high chuggin’ 13 barrels per capita. ugh.
Well, here we are in the future, and we’re not driving flying cars or cars that rely on anything else besides fossil fuels. True, there are some cars and prototypes that are running on hybrid batteries, but they’re not really available for the massive world market yet. I also look at the oil rig accident, which recently occurred. I was watching a report on CBS a few nights ago discussing the tragedy.
According to the report, there are at least 3,500 oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico, and President Obama intends to open up more rigs along the East Coast. Now, this is considered a very rare accident, and President Obama, despite being aware of the issue still plans to go forward with opening more rigs along the East coast.
Now, I love driving my car as much as the next person, but I’m also somewhat envrionmentally aware, and don’t endorse Obama’s course of action on this issue.
I know we do have the technology to make cars with alternative fuel sources, but why aren’t we working on making those? I suppose we’ll just have to wait for a cataclysmic event before we start looking into a new alternative that becomes a mainstay in regards to energy.
Ya know, I’m all for having a car that tells you everything you should pay attention to when driving. For instance, my old Volvo S60 would send me “text messages” explicitly telling me what was wrong with the car (check engine, fill the tank, replace bulb). Now almost every car will do something like this, but some cars are more passive aggressive about this than others. I’ll point you to the Volkswagen Touareg for instance. My family has this SUV right now, and while they love to drive the car, we lovingly refer to the constant dinging informing us of the air bag turning off, our seatbelts not being fastened, and when you leave the car in park while out of the car as the “bitch in the trunk.” The insatiably relentless dinging noise almost makes us want to rip out the car’s computer system. I know other cars do this as well with safety in mind, but sometimes the friendly reminder does become a little too much of a nagging factor.
So, do you have helpful, chronic reminder in your ride, or a Bitch in the Trunk?
