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Say hello to Generation Green. They're young, well-researched and mad as heck (http://www.theledger.com/article/20080213/NEWS/802130387/1326)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/bilde.jpgLeanne Italie - AP - Feb 16, 2008

Thank you rdprice64 for the find! - Ed

Marika Martin is a vegetarian. So is her husband, Charles Gonzalez, who rides his bicycle to work every day in New York City traffic, rain or shine. The couple care deeply about the environment, but if you ask their kids, 12-year-old Sinika and 8-year-old Soren, it's sometimes not deeply enough.

"My hopeless mother is obsessed with plastic bags," said Soren, a third-grader and huge fan of Al Gore's global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

"A lot of plastic can't be recycled," chimed in his sister, who's in the seventh grade. "The turtles can get suffocated and it can go into the water. My dad gave her a cloth bag but she doesn't use it. Plastic drives me nuts!"...http://www.theledger.com/article/20080213/NEWS/802130387/1326

Environmental issues are being brought into the spotlight more and more. I think we'll see a big jump when the olympics start up too. Its too hard to ignore, and education will help as well.

What a great article. :) It brings warmth to my heart and a smile to my face.

I spend so much time battling my own generation, and those that came before me, that sometimes I forget there is a different mentality coming up in the new generations.

The future will just get more and more polarized, I'm afraid. I'm sort of in the middle - I care about the environment. I recycle whenever possible, I hypermile (actually to save money, but helping the environment is a happy side effect), and I get paper bags instead of plastic. Plastic, you have to triple up anyway, or it breaks. I want to help the environment, but I do not believe in the Kyoto Protocols, cap and trade, or any gas taxes.

I am not in the cult following of Al Gore who say the earth will incinerate within a few years, that the seas will rise hundreds of feet, inundating millions and destroying civilization as we know it...and the degree to which the L. Ron Gore-ites continue to push this agenda just drives me further and further away from them.

(My favorite example is how the government predicted 12 inch rise in the sea, the IPCC predicted 15, and An Inconvenient Truth predicted...268, I think.)

This unfortunately forces me into the skeptic camp because I do not believe Al Gore's solutions will do anything to help, if not make the situation worse. So I've gotta have them stopped. (At 18, do I qualify for "the next generation"?)

I am not in the cult following of Al Gore ...

IMHO, I don't think its about Al Gore at all, if he helps motivate these kids, that's great. But I think its more about the fact that the kids are asking their "fast moving" parents to slow down to 55. Any help we can get to encourage more people to do that, the better off we will be.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I tend to get grief from my family for not going faster. My wife and 15 year old don't hide it and give me the "can we get there today?" question. I must give the wife some credit though, she is allowing me to keep her tires at the max sidewall and was happy to get 30 mph on a recent trip to Chicago in the '00 Odyssey, so I'm thankful for that.

My 12 year old is curious, but not always supportive, although she did ask me the other day why we take a different route to the gym then Mom does and seemed happy with my reply of "Well, this route is 8.0 miles instead of 12.5 miles and it's actually 2 minutes faster, it only seems slower because we're taking the roads less traveled, plus we get about 40 mpg instead of 36"

My 9 year old is more like the kids in the article and she asks my wife to go slower, so at least I have one ally. Although she doesn't even know who Al Gore is (thankfully)

At 18, do I qualify for "the next generation"?

Yes, I would consider you part of "the next generation". So the question that I have for you is "When you're making enough money to not worry about it, will you still care about FE?" I hope you will, but even if you don't I will be thankful for this time when you made the most of it. I personally would rather use less gas and spend that money on other things at this point in my life.


P.S. I like your new avatar. Go Italia!
I'm still working on mine.

We think the rise of Wicca among teens will be a positive factor when they become full adults. Wicca is a earth-friendly faith and many adherants are also vegetarian.

That's an interesting idea, Indigo. More and more religions are taking on a green aspect and I know Wicca has had it all along.

While I don't endorse any particular religion I know they are a large part of many people's lives, and I welcome their help with these things.

Maybe they care so much because they see the urgency, our lax attitude and don't want to become extinct.

This type of feel-good will never have an effect - shoot when I was in grade school (in the mid-late 60's); it was Earth Day this, recycle that - our teachers spent a lot of time and energy 'educating' us in the wasteful ways of excess consumption. We had loads of projects on the subject - it didn't make the slightest difference in our actions as adults.

The only way to change people's behaviour is to have it cost them - the way to make it cost people too much to waste gas, is to charge the full price of gasoline at the pump (including all subsidies and negative externalities)

If one would be charged the full price of gas - it would be $10 a gallon.

Trust me - at $10 a gallon, we wouldn't even need this site.

This type of feel-good will never have an effect - shoot when I was in grade school (in the mid-late 60's); it was Earth Day this, recycle that - our teachers spent a lot of time and energy 'educating' us in the wasteful ways of excess consumption. We had loads of projects on the subject - it didn't make the slightest difference in our actions as adults.

The only way to change people's behaviour is to have it cost them - the way to make it cost people too much to waste gas, is to charge the full price of gasoline at the pump (including all subsidies and negative externalities)

If one would be charged the full price of gas - it would be $10 a gallon.

Trust me - at $10 a gallon, we wouldn't even need this site.Allow me to be the Devil's Advocate - if what you say is correct, then this will have no effect either?

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/hummer-ins1.jpg (http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/hummer-ins1.jpg)






















Also, if gas spiked to $10 a gallon, I'd be inclinded traffic at CleanMPG would exceed our previous record to the extent our server would need upgrading - seriously...many of the things discussed here are common sense, but would you have arrived at all of them on your own?

Yes, I would consider you part of "the next generation". So the question that I have for you is "When you're making enough money to not worry about it, will you still care about FE?" I hope you will, but even if you don't I will be thankful for this time when you made the most of it. I personally would rather use less gas and spend that money on other things at this point in my life.

Before gas became mad expensive, I didn't really care. I drove like everyone else. I'd take off, jack the brakes to stop, drive 80+, or like I stole something...heh.

Broke college student + $3/gallon of gas = suddenly I care about mileage when I didn't give a hoot before.

I think the habits will stick, though. Even when I'm driving my father's car, my habits carry over even though he has an automatic and no SG . He ends up complaining how slow I drive. I say he drives like he's in NASCAR. He says hit the gas. I say it's bad on gas. He says it's his gas...and so on. :p


P.S. I like your new avatar. Go Italia!
I'm still working on mine.

Heh... this particular one is actually from the Fascist era (1922-1943, IIRC.) I couldn't think of anything else to put so...yeah.

We may see a lot more of this in the future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/us/16therapy.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1203379720-vZ6W/BjtWNlrE3GcYhwTtg

Anxious About Earth’s Troubles? There’s Treatment

For people who feel an acute unease about the future of the planet, a small but growing number of psychotherapists now offer a treatment designed to reduce worries as well as carbon footprints: ecopsychology.

Never, ever underestimate the effects of Captain Planet.