Eoin OC’s Recent Comments

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  Easier said than done

  Not everyone has the luxury of being able to change where they live and where they work.

  I work as an environmental journalist in Boston's Back Bay and I live in a nearby town. What am I supposed to do? Move into a $2500-a-month apartment in the middle of Boston? I suppose I'd also have to separate from my wife, because we now live near where she works.

  Or maybe I should give up a job I love so that I can work at the bar across the street? Or perhaps I could bike to work and just deal with the pain in my hinky right knee. Or I could walk to work, spending three hours commuting each way.

  All of these options are unacceptable to me. So, like most people of conscience, I do my best. I get the most fuel-efficient vehicle I can afford (in my case, a Honda Met scooter). I give up meat. I change my lightbulbs. I take a job that lets me try to inform others.

  I think most of us are in the same position. We're born into a deeply flawed system, one that produces far more waste than wealth. By the time we've become enlightened enough to see the ecological consequences of our actions, we're already in it way too deep, renting an inefficient apartment hooked up to a grid powered by coal, living far away from our loved ones so that we have to burn gasoline just to see them, owing too much to creditors to downshift our jobs.

  Don't burn fossil fuels. It sounds so easy. But the only people who can even consider this advice are the extremely fortunate. As for the rest of us? We do our best.

   On Scooter ridership zooms as gas prices rise posted 1 year, 5 months ago 6 Responses

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  I'll bet that January, February, and March. . .

  . . . are not exactly prime-time for scooter sales, especially in the northern US. I'm interested in hearing what the figures will be for the following three months. I guess it will depend on gas prices.

  I've been riding a four-stroke, 50cc Honda Metropolitan for almost a year now. It gets about 80 to 100 miles per gallon, which is pretty impressive, but still worse than a bicycle.

  As for emissions, I wrote about my scootering experience a couple weeks back in my environmental blog, and I had a lot of trouble finding reliable data on how the emissions    compared to that of two-stroke scooter engines, and to those of different cars. Anyone have any insights?On Scooter ridership zooms as gas prices rise posted 1 year, 5 months ago 6 Responses

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  Sorry I asked

  On Target your peak oil message to your audience posted 1 year, 5 months ago 24 Responses

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  Okay, I'll take the bait

  What's a DFH?On Target your peak oil message to your audience posted 1 year, 5 months ago 24 Responses

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  Maybe it's about the image

  The Prius has outsold all other hybrids combined, a fact that many attribute to the car's distinctive shape (most other hybrids look just like the original car).

  Driving a Prius, you not only burn less gas, you get to broadcast to the world that you care about the environment. You can't do that from an SUV, even if it is a hybrid.On Consumers shunning hefty hybrids posted 1 year, 5 months ago 8 Responses