During the school year, I see some of my friends every day, or every other day. When a few of them moved into an apartment around the corner from mine, I saw them everyday. It’s good, but all of us enjoy time apart too. More often then not I see my friends about once a week on average.

My dad lives in VA, so I only get to see him every three weeks or so, but I always cherish it. I have a sister who moved out some time ago, I see her once every few months, I don’t mind that.

I have not moved, and my lifestyle really has not changed much since I closed the goal. However, it has proven to my parents and myself that a car is hardly neccessary for me. I can use my mom’s car, and get rides from friends. The transit system still works.

One thing that became an issue is that leaving a car on the city streets for a long time on end, you’re susceptible to numerous parking tickets (I have a few) but what finally made me take it out of the city is that I got a sticker from the city citing it as an abandoned vehicle. They said without a valid inspection, it can be towed. Repairing the car for inspection is cost prohibitive for me, so I just took the car back to it’s place of origin. Long story short, it’s basically out of my life for now. And I’m happy about that.

Politically, oil is a hotter topic then coal. Everyone, right and left, wing nut and moderate, will complain about gas prices, oil imports from unfriendly producers etc. etc. all well and good, the world needs to find ways to stop using oil since it’s use, even in plug in hybrids and making organic food available from all over the world is not sustainable plain and simple. With the peaking of worldwide production, if it has not happened already, it will, the need is greater than ever.
Bicycles, changes in diet and reducing consumption of goods certainly help, but there is still tremendous progress that needs to be made.

But about coal, in the U.S it is used to generate 50% of all electricity. Meaning at least half the electricity you consume in your house comes from nasty coal fired power plants, each one puts out the green house gas emissions of approximately a million SUVs (they still run when SUVs are parked)

What about so-called clean coal? not happening. One can safely say that even if carbon capture and storage were to be practical (I have serious doubts) it still does not get around the issue that burning coal is not sustainable, not to mention that mining it is not like growing organic produce. Look up mountain-top removal and the devastation it has wrought. It cannot be ignored when discussing sustainability of energy sources.
I know about green power options, but they’re not always available, and the power companies, unless they have a dedicated 100% sustainable infrastructure, are buying power from numerous generators (no matter the fuel source) distributing it to regions based on demand. In short, even though you’re paying extra for green power, the juice that powers your EnergyStar appliances, and my rant, could have come from a coal plant. It’s worth supporting though.
Even if you cannot go whole-hog into supplying your own renewable energy, even just making available funds for solar panels to recharge batteries such as those for your laptop and cell phone would be a good step up.

This rant was not powered by renewable energy, much to the authors regret.