I don’t know how often I see a car left running while the driver “runs in” to get a coffee or into the store.

Ok – since I know that we won’t do the above, could we at least put out the effort to raise awareness to “shut it off” so that we won’t HAVE to fine the people who are so unaware?

Don’t raise sales tax. Create a high luxury tax on SUV’s, Hummers and expensive cars that do not get 25mpg (and that is generous).

Then add a tax to households with more than 2 cars (there may be a way creative liars can get out of this, but liars always find a way).

The other day we visited friends who had a 5-passenger car. It was two adults and our 6-yr old so you’d think we’d all fit – right? Barely! The 6-yr old has to ride in a booster seat so it was a finely orchestrated adventure every time we had to buckle up.

Funny, I remember growing up in a family with 2 adults and 4 kids and my parents never owned anything bigger than a Rambler station wagon (6 seats – 3 in the front and 3 in the back). Now because manuevering a 2-yr old in and out of a 5-point harness carseat is such a strain on my back, we ended up buying a mini-van because I was killing myself trying to get her in and out of the back of the sedan. Because we have a total of 5 children that we sometimes tote around (not in our household but in our family), the mini-van made sense. If some of them could sit in the front, we would have gotten away with a sedan.

And I remember back in 1982 when I bought my Mazda B2000 – a small pick-up – the gas mileage was an awesome 30-something miles to the gallon. I can’t find any truck that gets that kind of mileage. All the gas is sacrificed for a transmission to engine ratio that is supposed to be delivering more power. I don’t need more power. All I want is a small, fuel efficient vehicle that I can haul a few things in if the mood strikes.

Oh and public transportation – yeah, a bus that stops at any of the park and rides in Eagle and takes a body to downtown Eagle on a regular basis – perhaps once every 30 minutes – would be mighty useful.

I am old and have only owned 4 cars in my life. One of them I drove, lightly, for 14 years. The car I have now is 15 years old and has 57000 miles on it. My rule of working was that I never worked more than a mile and a half from my home. That was so I could look after my children and parents. This was never a problem for me, although my house was old and shabby by today’s standards.

I hope you folks will find a solution to the pollution problem – the bad air is an instant headache for many of us.

All the preaching and wishing simply won’t matter. They will continue to drive Durangos, or whatever the latest “cool” car is, and there is nothing we can do about it. It just is what it is!

I applaud your passion, but I think we really are the planet of the apes!

At some point, the cost of fuel WILL have an impact on transportation choices. Obviously that point isn’t $3, at least for the general populace.

(The economic talking-heads say that so far, holiday spending is holding steady or going up, especially in electronics, clothes, etc. However, the “bling” industry – jewelry and the like – is struggling. So people are making tough choices – choosing the necessities, like the new-model iPod, HDTV and Old Navy, over the luxuries like tennis bracelets.)

Will people have to choose between fuel and food when gas is $4? $5? (As long as people are willing to keep paying whatever the oil companies decide to charge for their product, why would Big Oil EVER decide to hold their prices steady?)

I pity the fool who lives on Heaven’s Half Acre out there in Kuna or Greenleaf, and commutes to Boise every day in his 12MPG Dodge Durango. But I’m glad to live in a country where fools can make such choices.

I’m no saint. I just recognize my impact, and choose to reduce it. I don’t consider that amazing, just responsible.

Sadly, I agree with Cyclops’ assertion that rising gas prices will have little or no impact on people’s choices. People will never give up the perceived freedom of their iron horses for economic reasons. Did anyone start driving because it was economical? No. We start driving because society tells us it makes us free, and every social force and implication reinforces that notion. Only education and intellectual maturity can change that.

And who cares what the “young professional men and women working their way up the corporate ladder” are doing? When they’re not engaging in Black Friday at the mall? LOSERS!!

Cars are for the crippled and the weak! Bikes rule!

(Yeah… I’m being deliberately provocative, so there’s really no point in composing a terse reply. But I gave car-transportation up, pretty much entirely, 20+ years ago, and I’d NEVER go back to that expensive, stress-laden, smelly mode of transportation. I agree with the author that ever-increasing gas prices will result in more efficient vehicles, and hopefully more socially-responsible vehicle use, as well.)

What we can do is to be thoughtful about how we live our daily lives. This concerns more than just our checkbooks, it also impacts the quality of the air we breathe. When I was a child, my parents chose a house based exclusively on the school district with a price determinant.

In today’s world we need to make more informed and thoughtful choices as citizens who have to manage multiple priorities. In this case, what is good for the checkbook, is also good for the environment. We need to consider not just the purchase price of a house, but the proximity of the location to work, shopping, school and public transportation or infrastructure such as the Greenbelt which supports biking, as well.

Thankfully, Cyclops does not represent the majority of the citizens of the Boise area.

Yes, the electrical capacity will have to increase if there are more electric cars on the road and yes those power plants will be coal/nuclear but there are great increasing returns to scale for the power plants. On a per car basis the pollution will be significantly lower. The numbers I have seen in Popular Science/Mechanics and other sources say that the elctricity cost is somewhere in the pennies/nickles/dimes per gallon range.

It may not be an end all solution but it is sure better than doing nothing for 30 more years waiting for something else to come along.

BTW: Trains are only shown to be a viable, cost/environment saving measures in densely populated areas like the East coast/Europe/Japan. They work well for moving large volumes of people/cargo but when 2-5% ride you must have a huge population base to fill a good sized train. That said I’d love to see a wider spread use of mag-lev trains and GE’s newest hybrid train. GE claims that if all US based locomotives were as efficient as their new one it would cut the equivalent of over 1 million cars off the road.