Whoa… I just realized it has been almost a month since I made a post! Time flies when you’re busier than you have ever been before!

 

I can’t believe that I am almost done with my undergraduate studies. It literally seems like a few months ago that I was sitting on the South Oval with my friends laughing and talking before going back to hang out in our freshman dorms. Our lives were all so similar then, we went to class, some of us went to work, and then we went out and did things together on the weekends.

 

Now everything is so different and I feel like we are all on such different paths. My friend April is moving to Wisconsin for a job! I’m going to law school and moving to Cincinnati, the first time I have ever moved anywhere in my life. It is a crazy time, and very stressful.

 

I wish I had the time to sit down and really reflect on the past four years and how they have helped me to grow as a person, a friend, and a girlfriend, but I have so much to think about now that reflection is very low on the list.

 

I guess I don’t really have a point with this post, other than that I wish I had more time to do a lot of the things I used to enjoy.. Maybe someday! 

Here is a commentary piece from the Gotham Gazette that really makes sense. The writer, Rich Kassel, is of the opinion that the US EPA’s miles per gallon ratings are really not too useful, and I agree.

The MPG ratings make tons of assumptions about how people drive, where they drive, and who and what they are carrying around, so much so that MPG rating for a particular model could vary wildly depending on who is driving the car and where they are driving it.

Kassel suggests that automakers take the time to figure out the entire footprint of the cars they make, from production all the way until the last mile it drives. This method would take into account the amount of energy and resources required to make the car in the first place, deliver it to its destination, drive it for its entire life cycle, and finally put it to its grave at the end of its run.

This seems like a much more logical way of figuring out a car’s “greenworthiness” to me, and I hope that car manufacturers and others aren’t too lazy to begin actually calculating the carbon footprint of a vehicle from start to finish.

Michael Klare wrote a book that I want to read. It’s called Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, and it’s about our upcoming struggle for energy with other major oil consuming countries.

In an interview with Energy Bulletin, Klare paints what some might consider to be a doomsday picture of the future of our world. Although many are afraid to admit to themselves that this is the most likely option for our future, Klare backs up his arguments with solid logic.

Klare speaks not only of our dwindling resources, but also of the changing face of global politics and the idea that being a military superpower will not be as important as being an energy superpower in upcoming years.

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet looks at the global situation that we have found ourselves in and stresses that the only way to achieve solutions is to work together cooperatively, not fight each other for the scarce remaining resources.

Dick Cavett, of the New York Times has written a witty and insightful blog about one of the things both of our guest speakers have mentioned: The enigmatical language which officials in technical professions use to befuddle common, undistinguished Americans. (Get it?)

Cavett addresses his complaints to General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. Cavett calls it “copspeak” and the general rule is “never use a shorter word when a longer one will do.” He gripes that Petraeus’ “ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel” could have been simply stated as “more soldiers.”

It’s good to see someone pointing these things out, because I’m sure many people don’t understand that the reason Petraeus and others use this type of language is not just to sound smarter than us, but also to keep us from grasping what is actually happening in Iraq. I’m glad Cavett called them out for this, and I hope it does some good.

Today I stumbled upon this WSJ story about the fight for jobs that my 2008 classmates have ahead of them. Very scary. The writer argues that the perceived downturn in the economy is adversely affecting the number of jobs that will be available to the graduating class of 2008.

There are two sides to this story, though. My friend April Steinbrunner wrote an opinion piece for The Lantern in which she argues that demographic factors, not economic ones, will determine our generation’s ability to get a job. April cites the fact that many baby boomers are retiring and many in the generation ahead of us are cutting back on hours in order to spend time with their families, making our generation the perfect workhorses for today’s corporate world.

I don’t know what will actually happen when all is said and done, but I do know how incredibly happy I am that I don’t have to worry about it for another three years!

Finally, I have found an extremely well written piece about “peak oil” that puts everything on the table. I couldn’t have written it better myself. This editorial from The Patriot News urges us to declare an “energy emergency” and dispels many of the myths surrounding the United States’ energy consumption.

Myth #1: Greedy oil companies are at fault for high oil prices. Although they are making plenty of money, the real culprit is the fact that there is only a finite amount of the stuff in the world, and we have already used more than half of it. Duh.

Myth #2: US oil fields in Alaska or elsewhere will save us all. Nope. Apparently it has been found that the US only has about 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, and we are already producing 8 percent of world oil today. That won’t work.

Myth #3: Some amazing silver-bullet technology like fuel cells or electric cars will be the answer. This is something I’ve been harping on for a while, the point is that there is not one single answer to this problem, in the end, it will be a variety of technologies that gets us out of this mess.

Myth #4: Oil sands, oil shale and tar sands have plenty of oil for the forseeable future. This is simply wishful thinking. Not only is the extraction process of these things extremely dirty, they don’t produce nearly as much as current oil fields. Compare 3 million gallons a day to the 87 million we are currently consuming each day, and you will see that it just doesn’t add up.

This is something I’ve never heard of before, biogasoline. It’s a new biofuel they’re making from switchgrass and other non-food crops. It also runs in your regular gasoline engine with no modifications. Verrry interesting.

Don’t get too excited yet, though, the makers of this new fuel, Shell and Virent Energy Systems, have quite a few hurdles to jump before it becomes economically viable. They need to find places to grow the crops, factories to produce the biogasoline, and consumers and fuel marketers willing to buy and sell it.

Despite all this, biogasoline could be a very exciting step in the path towards energy independence.

Everyone knows that hybrid cars are the latest and greatest for anyone who wants to be considered “environmentally friendly.” Hybrids cut petroleum use significantly by implementing an battery operated electric motor that runs the car at lower speeds and allows the traditional gasoline engine only to run while at higher speeds. Hybrids seem so great that even Barack Obama has said that if he were to become president, the entire government fleet would consist of hybrid vehicles.

But does anyone know what’s in those big hybrid batteries? I’ll tell you. It’s lithium. And there really isn’t very much of it to be found naturally here on planet earth.

According to William Tahil, Director of Research for Meridian International Research, a majority of the world’s lithium deposits are found in a small area at the top of the Andes mountains. In an interview with EVWorld.com, Tahil says that we may already have reached “peak lithium,” which could have very serious implications for motorists and automakers who are scrambling to buy and produce an ever growing selection of hybrid models.

The idea of peak lithium is just one speed bump in the long and arduous road to petroleum independence that lies ahead. What I think is most important for us to take away from these findings is not that hybrids are terrible and we should all quit buying them, but that there will never be one simple and neat solution to this giant problem we have created for ourselves.

Hybrids may be great for today, but it seems they will not be viable forever, especially when the oil wells finally spit out their last drops of black gold and we have mined all of the lithium we can find on this earth. And because we haven’t seemed to find that silver bullet to save us from petroleum just yet, it looks like we need to just keep looking, and maybe someday (hopefully sooner than later) we will find that technology that does not rely on any kind of non-renewable natural resource. 

Until that day comes, I say keep buying hybrids, using biofuels and taking the bus. These are the best options we have available to us right now, and just because they aren’t perfect doesn’t mean they don’t help. 

Ahh.. the dreaded first post. How terribly intimidating. I guess I’ll start out with a little bit about myself, a topic that should be pretty easy to write on.

 I’m 21 years old and was born and raised in Clintonville, the best neighborhood in Columbus. I’m graduating this spring with a degree in journalism and political science. In August, I’ll be headed off to Northern Kentucky University to begin what I’m certain will be the hardest three years of my life, law school. I currently have a job that I love, working for a small non-profit organization called Clean Fuels Ohio, which promotes alternative fuels and vehicle technologies, among other things.

 Aside from those basic/boring things, my interests tend to include music of all types, movies of a pretty specific type, politics, “green” stuff, and anything new or different. I hope to write about a number of different things throughout the quarter, at least some of which I hope will be interesting!

 I’ll leave you with a lovely photo of my boyfriend Nick and I, since I know that pictures always make things more interesting.