So 4 miles, isn't that possible by bike? If you're working in conservation, you're probably interested in the environment. If you're using petrol or diesel you're causing emissions into the air and harming the ecosystem. Bike and save petrol, save money, reduce demand on oil and limited natural resources that are carbon emitters. Take the public transport if you have to.
By bike -- well, first, if it WERE only four miles, that would be a thought. Except I'd end up doing half of it walking, because the grade on most of the hills involved is enough I can't pedal that any more -- but then, I would have to go back to driving, because the only way to walk my bike would be to walk in the ditch and roll my bike on the 6" shoulder. But even if it were flat -- I don't think anyone makes a bicycle trailer big enough for four trash cans, a stack of broken concrete blocks or broken rock, four 25-gal tubs of soil, a 5-gal container of water, and a number of 3.5-gal buckets for moving things around in out at the project.
Public transport? They wouldn't even let me bring my containers of tools -- pick, shovel, rake, axe, 8-lb hammer, clippers, stakes, rope..... Besides, they run once a day, period.
These are the sorts of reasoning the government here are trying to coax the people to follow. You probably see it as nanny state interference.
Actually, the nanny-state interference with my project that I see is the government claiming authority over a wide swath of private property just because water runs down that slope to or from the road, so I have to jump through silly hoops just to take care of work that in the end is actually their responsibility (e.g. keeping the hillside from collapsing on the road, keeping the road drainage ditch in existence, preventing the road from collapsing due to erosion -- all things that have become part of the project just to keep the main point, the safe access trail, sound) -- though it wouldn't hurt if they'd actually also do their job and give us roads with lanes wider than 8' plus paved shoulders wider than 3" and gravel shoulders wider than 6".
As for making fuel, well, diesel engines with slight modifications can run on chip pan oil. Albeit processed chip pan oil. In Japan, they're already doing it. This is a good way of reusing cooking oil after its served its usefulness as a cooking ingredient. I think though that raising crops to make bio-oil just takes up valuable land which could better be used for growing food. The reliance on imported food is alarming. Why do you want other countries to grow food to ship in? Transportation costs alone are one factor to think local grown is best.
Yes, and the local tourist train runs on re-processed used motor oil collected from auto garages and such (or people can drop theirs off).
As for growing oil, we have a plant here that a local kid, in a project that went to the global science fair competition, showed can be turned into diesel -- and it's a pest plant, on top of that, one that's been spreading for over a century and destroying habitat (it can get dense enough to choke out rabbit trails, on top of choking out what rabbits eat). We also have a native plant that grows like crazy and contains enough oil in the leaves that it would make a very rich feedstock for....
well, as I said, "anything to oil", which would turn our common trash into oil -- and not so common, as well; it was demonstrated that carcasses of animals with mad cow disease, rabies, bubonic, and other nasty afflictions can be dumped in the feed end and come out with no trace of the viral or bacterial presence (not just disease, but presence: all DNA is cooked down into its component fragments [don't let the mob get their hands on one of those plants!]).
Selfish reasons are always the ones that holds us back. We need our cars because it is how we've always travelled, its convenience over public transport means we save time for ourselves.
Cars aren't "how I've always traveled". I resisted owning a vehicle until it became necessary -- a daily 40+ -mile commute by bicycle isn't realistic, or even a 12-mile commute when I have over half a ton of supplies to haul.
When it exists, I love public transport, because THAT is when I get time for myself -- instead of being trapped in traffic, "rolling in line", fighting something akin to claustrophobia, I can open my laptop and write or tackle yet another free cell game. But if I relied on public transport around here, I'd spend well over an hour a day on foot just getting to the bus stops, and be extremely limited in how much I can do anywhere -- the only places it goes to on a useful enough schedule to be able to actually put in even a half-day of work are within walking distance, anyway (I don't understand why people spend $2 to go 3/4 of a mile -- which reminds me; to get to my conservation and safety project and back by public transport would cost almost as much as driving it myself, and get me there with no supplies and no tools).
We can't afford the gas prices in the US, but the Europeans can because they don't travel that far is a crock of shit argument and you know it.
They don't -- just look at a map. I know lots of people who travel fifty or more miles a day one-way to go to work. I know a few who travel over a hundred. I know very few people who can get to work using public transport, because public transport won't get them to those places, or won't get them there on a schedule that will let them keep a job.
I've lived places where the nearest grocery store is twenty-five miles away, the nearest doctor seventy-five.
Europeans are crowded together. Except for the big metropolitan areas, the U.S. isn't. Doubling our gas prices would be a death warrant for thousands of small towns -- there are places now where vendors will no longer deliver, thanks to gas prices; thinking about those prices doubling is frightening.
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