Cowtown Chronicles

If you’re really, really pissed off about the price of gas, and you’ve found that it’s putting a serious financial pinch on you to fill up your vehicle every week, I’ve got a suggestion…

SLOW DOWN!

Yeah, I’m that asshole who sets his cruise control to 60 and stays in the right lane, keeping you from being able to pass on the right. But you know what? I’m able to squeeze 5 full days of commuting plus some weekend driving out of a tank of gas. If I slowed down to 55, I’d go even farther.

Texas is supposed to be a very conservative place. Why is it that so many “conservatives” make no effort at all to actually conserve anything? They’ve decided that it’s their God-given right to build huge, wasteful houses, to drive huge, wasteful cars, to buy and throw away a wardrobe’s worth of close every year, all in the name of free commerce.

Our grandparents had it right. They were conservative, and they also made a serious effort to conserve the things they had.

Tags: environmentalism, sustainability, conservation, conservatives, driving, earth day

The answer to that question is that in the vast majority of cases, yes, it most certainly is.

It’s time, though, to move past our national snobbishness toward tradesmen/women. Not everyone who forgoes college winds up flipping burgers. Not too long ago, nearly all of those people went into some kind of trade. Now those jobs are less available due to immigration and less desirable because every level of our education system is focused on pushing kids into a 4-year university.

Jenna was telling me the other day that it’s almost impossible to find a non-immigrant (legal or otherwise) drywall installer in Texas. It’s a skill bordering on an art form, and since kids coming out of high school aren’t choosing that path for employment, there are fewer people here to do it.

Let’s get over our national obsession with pushing everyone into college. We need tradesmen/women just as much as we do computer programmers and marketing folks.

Editor’s Note: This is one in an infrequently recurring series on personal finance and my plan for getting ours in order. I am not a financial planner, but I think this is common sense advice that anyone can follow, no matter your financial situation. Don’t sue me if you try it and it backfires.

It’s important to understand that nearly everyone in the United States has debt of some kind. You’re not alone. And if you’re overwhelmed by the amount of debt you’re carrying, you’re also not the only one out there.

Think about your debt. Do you have a credit card? Several credit cards? Student loans? Loans for other things, like cars or a boat? Do you own your house outright, or is it mortgaged? Now think about the people you know. That guy down the street with two really nice SUVs and the 58″ plasma - do you think he paid cash for all of that? If so, good for him, but chances are he didn’t.

Debt is neither good nor bad. That sounds really touchy-feely, but it’s true. Buying things on credit gives us the opportunity to live a good life and enjoy things that you wouldn’t be able to pay cash for all at once. There’s no way I could have come up with the money to buy my house with cash, at least not within the next 10 years. For one, I don’t have the kind of discipline that would make me able to save for that long, but also, the availability of a mortgage makes it unnecessary.

Having said that, however, while the availability of debt may be convenient, it’s not always a good thing. It’s VERY easy to overextend yourself with so much debt that it gets out of control.

I see some forms of debt as not as bad as others. Student loans and mortgages, in my opinion, are not as damaging financially as consumer debt. Consumer debt is debt that you take on to pay for STUFF. (I don’t consider your house to be part of that STUFF, since you need to have a place to live.) Student loans truly are an investment in your career and future. Study after study shows that a college degree is the ONLY trait that separates high earning people from low earning people. Family status or situation, whether you were from a single-parent or nuclear family, none of that matters when it comes to your lifetime earning potential. As I stated before, while real estate is NOT a guaranteed money-making investment, you need to have a place to live anyway, and it’s nice to own your own house.

(more…)

And also some complete losses of reason.

Once again I’ve given in and read the comments on a story at the S-T’s website. The story happens to be about how the increase in gas prices is affecting commuters around the city. Generally the people quoted in the piece are handling it like adults, taking responsibility for their actions and choosing to modify their behavior or downsize their vehicles. (Huh. Proof that the markets really do work!)

But the comments are where the REAL action is. Take this nutjob for example:

Conservation CANNOT solve the problem. Congress should stop taking money from the Environmentalists and pass legislation to unplug wells first and then allow drilling in Alaska and off California and New England and the building of refineries on fast track (minimal environmental restrictions). Most of all Americans need to get over this national guilt conplex over using Earth’s resources.

*
Posted by: Tired of the stupidity of the ignorant masses

Apparently it’s the ENVIRONMENTALIST lobby that’s been raking in all those massive profits on oil and funneling that money directly into the pockets of legislators. Damn! How could I have been so stupid?

I hope this isn’t a commonly held opinion in conservative circles, because it (obviously) couldn’t be more wrong. (It’s a “guilt conplex” that’s making us want to protect and conserve Earth’s resources? Apparently we’re all stupid because we don’t want to breathe poisoned air or drink poisoned water.)

I agree that conservation cannot solve the problem (although I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the root of “Conservative” is “conserve”), at least not alone. Conservation combined with exploration of alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, nuclear, etc. IS the answer. Clinging to dirty, destructive energy sources like coal and petroleum JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE CHEAP is a ridiculous position.

If someone said “I’ll give you this truck, but I have to take one of your legs in return,” would you make that deal? That’s essentially what we’re doing when we refuse to give up environmentally damaging things solely for convenience or frugality’s sake.

We’re poisoning ourselves slowly and causing untold damage to our ecosystems, but at least everyone has a car, right?

Just in case you were wondering, you CAN build a sustainable home that anyone looking at it would immediately identify as a HOUSE. Have you ever noticed that kids always draw the same thing when you ask them to draw a house, no matter where they grew up? Peaked roof, two rectangular windows in the front, maybe a dormer or two…

I’ve never seen a kid draw Fallingwater when asked to draw a house. Not that there’s anything wrong with a modern house, believe me, I LOVE modern houses, particularly of the mid-century flavor, but I think this one is a good response for those neighborhoods where a more modern shaped house wouldn’t be a good fit.

Watch it. Now. It’s only 10 minutes, and it clears up all of the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt you have about climate destabilization.

Thanks for linking to it, EcoGeek!

You might have heard me say that I abhor “green” as a descriptive word. Unless it’s describing the color of something. Let’s talk about another word… Sustainable. The dictionary built into my trusty Power Mac provides the following definition of sustainable: “able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.”

What does that mean when someone uses it in reference to a lifestyle, building, city, etc.? Fortunately it means exactly what it sounds like. To live sustainably means to conduct your life in a way that makes you able to maintain your lifestyle at a certain rate or level. To build sustainably means that you use only what you need and that the built environment respects the balances necessary in nature both for sourcing materials and for heating/cooling and landscaping maintenance.

(more…)