AARP sees a Global Meltdown

New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin wrote an article for AARP magazine entitled "Global Meltdown". For those of you who may not know, AARP is the American Association of Retired People, and its magazine is "the world's largest circulation magazine" so it may be wise to listen up.

Mr. Revkin bemoans the situation we all already know about but he is writing to exactly the people who helped bring us to this situation. Today's retired and near retired people were the ones who created the suburban, 2-car, second home, bigger-is-better life style that we grew up in. I remember gasoline in about 1970 costing somewhere south of 30 cents a gallon. (In the 1990s, even I drove 100+ miles a day to my job on alternative fuels.)

So what are we to do? I think the message is either: Stop doing what we are doing that uses too much energy OR keep doing what you are doing but do it much more efficiently. In either case the result is the same – we slow the ticking carbon-bomb that we are leaving to future generations. Easy to type - not so easy to do.

Sadly, I fear it will take another Hurricane Katrina or Oil Embargo to get US citizens to depose us from the position of the world's largest creator of carbon emissions. ABG readers are doing their part pushing the auto industry toward doing "it much more efficiently" with cars like hybrids or the Tesla or the Volt. Don't drive when you don't have to. When you do drive, do it as efficiently as possible.

[Source: Andrew Revkin / AARP]