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Cutting Our Dependence on Foreign Oil

August 27, 2008 4:53 PM

Vicki Mabrey reports:

Back from an amazing shoot in Uganda, a productive and fun vacation in London and Italy, and now glued to the convention coverage.

Did anybody else find Montana governor Brian Schweitzer's remarks Tuesday night thought-provoking? Apparently he was the designated attack dog on energy: to combat "skyrocketing fuel prices," he talked about biofuels, wind energy, solar power, and "coal gassification" (okay, lost me there).

"There just isn't enough oil in America, on land or offshore, to meet America’s full energy needs," he said. "Barack Obama understands the most important barrel of oil is the one you don't use."

Leaving politics aside, that last line struck me as the most important of all. The most important barrel of oil is the one you don't use, indeed.

I would take his thinking a step further. I'm all for exploring alternative energy sources, but what about human energy? Walking, strolling, cycling, scooting? That, in fact, is a huge difference between European countries and the United States. We are a culture built around the car. They are a culture built around humans. I was walking around the ancient Roman-walled city of Lucca, Italy, thinking that I saw more people in a day on the streets there than I would see in a month in my hometown of St Louis or any other comparable U.S. city (with the exception of New York, of course). I saw people, even the gray-haired men and women, walking and riding what we call "sit-up-and-beg" bicycles. Each evening I made sure to look for the Gang of Four -- a lovely and girlish group of four 70-something women, who convened on a particular park bench each night around 9, eating their gelatos and laughing. All day and into the evening I saw all ages out perambulating -- that's really the best word to describe it. Strolling, meandering, gelato in hand, talking to their neighbors.

I'm picturing my parents' suburban Saint Louis home as I write this and I know it's a generalization, but in many cases the description is apt: We wave to the neighbor as we get the mail, then pull our cars out of our garages and drive to the convenience store for a gallon of milk. How much energy does that use? Wouldn't it be more energy efficient if we lived in neighborhoods with shops downstairs or down the street, where we walked to get our milk, rode the train or the bus to work, and took the car out just for that rare Sunday sightseeing drive?

Montana's governor got it right: the most important barrel of oil is the one you don’t use.

August 27, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)

Life in the Commuting Lane

August 06, 2008 3:30 PM

'Nightline' producer Ely Brown recently spent some time in Maryland to report on life as an ex-urbian, a person who works in the city but lives in the suburbs.  But while these people may save money on that pricey urban real-estate,  they encounter a whole new list of problems: longer commutes, high gas prices, and traffic -- lots of traffic.  Below, Ely Brown shares her feelings on life in the exurbs.  You can watch the story tonight on 'Nightline,' 11:35 p.m. ET.

I don't like commuting.  Crowded buses, subway platforms, sluggish rush hour traffic all make me shudder.  I make lots of decisions in order to keep it to a bare minimum.  In graduate school I lived close enough to campus to walk.  When I started my professional career with ABC in New York City, I opted for a dark, tenement apartment within a 25 minute walk to the office rather than a sunnier, bigger place that would have involved a subway ride.  When I moved to Washington,DC, I searched high and low for a house I could buy that was close to work.  I managed to find one in an "up and coming" neighborhood that is an 18 minute (downhill) bike ride to work, 25 minutes (uphill!) home.

In many ways I am lucky. I don't have kids so I don't have to worry about good public schools.  I live in a city with a wide spectrum of real estate options.  But for many people, the real estate boom of previous years priced them out of being able to live in the urban areas where they work. 

The answer was tremendous growth of new housing and interest in the exurbs -- areas far away from city centers with lower house prices, cheaper property taxes and to some a  better quality of life.  But the trade off for those benefits was a long commute.  Fifty, sixty, seventy miles or more.  One way. 

And now with gas prices averaging near $4 a gallon, families who thought they were getting a deal are instead getting slammed by the high cost of gas.

So I traveled from DC out to Cumberland Maryland to follow two families as they embarked on their daily commutes.  As I drove out to
Cumberland -- 2 hours and 10 minutes away in moderate traffic -- I couldn't help but imagine what the drive would be like to do everyday.  And I also couldn't help but watch the needle on my gas gauge plummet as I drove mile after mile.  Refilling it cost $60.  Ouch.  I figured if I actually lived out here, I’d have to fill it at least three times a week doing that commute at a cost of about $180.

A summer fellow working in Nightline's NY office joined me on the shoot.  Eliot Caroom intelligently was driving a Honda Hybrid.  Over the course of two days of driving across Maryland and West Virginia he averaged 50 miles per gallon, thus proving that there are options out there to save a buck on gas if you are going to have to do long haul commutes. 

In researching the story we talked to many families who tried to find creative solutions to the problem of gas prices and killer commutes.  One person drove an hour to pick up a carpool van for the final hour of his commute.  Another carpooled everyday, leaving home before dark to beat traffic and save time by not sitting for hours in a rush hour crawl.  And others still would drive in Monday morning and then stay part of the week with friends or family closer to work.  Even the cameraman on our shoot, who lives 50 miles from ABC's downtown bureau in Washington has gone out and purchased a motorcycle to cut costs.

August 6, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)