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| Monday, July 17, 2006 |
| Another lesson from France: don't bitch about gas prices |
For 3 days in the Loire Valley (after 5 in Paris, where my wife and I didn't take the metro once, and a cab only once because of time constraints), I rented a typical tiny European car to drive from town to town.
The car I'm sure gets great gas mileage, which is a good thing, because when I was filling it up prior to returning it, I added just under a half tank of gas, which cost me 31 Euros, or approximately $39!
That means filling up that little car from empty would cost $80!
No wonder they have such good train systems in Europe. And pollute less. And don't have to go to war in the Middle East to protect their lifestyle.
P.S. On this last point, I've just begun reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma", which makes a compelling argument in the first hundred pages that most of our food system is dependent on fossil fuels (which goes into the fertilizer that grows the midwest corn that's in so much of our food in some form or another). So not only do we drive our dependence on the middle east, but we eat it too. |
posted by CB @ 2:56 PM   |
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