Apology to Michael Chertoff

August 4th, 2007 Opinion, global warming

My last (how time flies) tongue-in-cheek sarcastic post requires an apology.  Evidently, Secretary Chertoff’s “gut” told him something.  Looks like it had to do with a failing infrastructure.  Or maybe all the wildfires in the west, or the flailing stock market, or the failing home market, or the realization that our globalized children’s toy market (read: 80% come from China) had hazardous levels of lead in the paint - well something had to give!

I go with his gut pointing to the Minnesota bridge collapse.  How many of us will cross a bridge without questioning our safety?  Those who do - without a second thought - are no doubt the same people who buy a lottery ticket for charitable purposes: “It won’t happen to me!”

Maybe this will put Vermont’s focus on it’s carbon footprint in proper perspective. (After all - we’ve moved on to gay marriage as the appropriate diversion.) That one bridge in Minnesota carried 140,000 cars a day.  So now how do they get to where they are going?  Let’s for the sake of argument assume this will add 5 miles to each of those 140,000 cars.  So that another 700,000 miles requiring 0.05 gallons (20 mpg) per mile or an extra 35,000 gallons of gasoline. That’s each day. For 250 commuting days a year, another 8.75 million gallons of gasoline. Or, on a gallon for gallon basis, about 6% of Vermont’s average heating oil usage.  So how much would the “Entergy” program have saved Vermonters each year?

And just for a some good old CYA, let’s close a few more old bridges until…