I wouldn’t mind having a car that runs on biodiesel or soap or some nifty Tesla thing. Tesla was cool. For now it’s an old Geo Metro.

“what happens when people reach green saturation and fashions shift?”
Maybe almost everything will be green and by then no one will notice. I think the better we take care of our planet and resources, the better. How would this help or hinder silk producers? I like silk and sometimes it’s the best thing for the job. Also, white or off-white silk organza makes a really strong and nifty pressing cloth. I got that tip from Threads, but I’ve been using one for probably a year, and it’s great.

Things are not always as they appear. The shift from paper towards plastic bags in the first place was in response to an earlier belief that we were killing trees to make them. True, but most of it comes from farmed trees grown for that purpose. Thus, we had a fashionable shift from a renewable to a non-renewable resource. The pro-hybrid regulation may be similar: taxi drivers are not too stupid or poor (a medallion in NYC costs $300,000) to make that kind of investment on their own, and GM may have previously had a hand in driving out autobuses and jitneys, so one wonders what kind of back-room dealing was involved. And of course it puts the city in the position of picking the winner, which the hybrid may not be.

But my bigger concerns are (a) how much of this is greenwashing, and (b) what happens when people reach green saturation and fashions shift?

http://www.teslamotors.com/

The Tesla does indeed “make a statement about me” for many reasons, not just Eco-Chic.

A quick google search reveals other electric cars (in production now or soon) that can reach and maintain freeway speeds. NEVs (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles) do indeed have lower top speeds (25-35) but NEVs are only one type of electric car.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_electric_vehicle

Claire-Marie

One caveat on the Telsa’s and other similar cars they don’t go that fast. We were looking at one for short commutes but they don’t go over 35 miles per hour and in LA you can drive that slow even on the streets.

That said, my dream car is the Tesla electric sports car. I’ll have to be very successful in my business if I hope to afford that one at $100K+. But it’s so cool

If people are car conscious, then yes, the car makes a statement about them. If all they want is to get from point A to point B, then they could care less.

That was a crappy survey.

As an aside, Hubby now drives a Jetta TDI. He *loves* it. VW is making a huge mistake by not bringing more of their diesels to the US.

If you give purchasers of ANY model of car a similar multiple choice survey, a big proportion of those car purchasers will also choose “Makes a statement about me”. Why did you buy a Hummer? Corvette? Cadillac Escalade? Volkswagon Bug? Ginormous Pickup Truck? Miata? “Makes a statement about me”.

I have been amazed in the past to read about or talk to car buyers where the biggest deciding factor about which car to buy (a MAJOR purchase) is the styling or the “image” associated with the car. (Or where the cup holder is located.) I just don’t think Prius buyers are unique (or “more unique”) in this regard. If “Makes a statement about me” had not been one of the mulitple choices in the survey, the responders would have selected a different multiple choice and the results and the spin on this survey would be a bit different, me thinks. I’ve participated in mulitple choice phone surveys before; these are not open ended survey questions.

Claire-Marie

I am uncomfortable with eco-chic signaling. What happens when fashion changes? Will energy policy swing as quickly as hemlines? Is it too much to hope for rationality over hype?

I rinse out plastic produce bags and stuff them into canvas bags. I put them on the doorknob so I remember to put them into the car. Mark is almost trained to use the canvas bags (~85% of the time). He thinks it is weird to reuse plastic produce bags but I persevere. I bring my own jars to the bulk bins, and the staff at Whole Foods no longer wonders what I am doing.

We rarely get our groceries bagged in plastic because I am too type A to stand around and wait for them to bag my groceries. I bag them while the cashier scans them.

I just bought some organic bamboo/cotton/lycra from Dharma Trading for ~$11/yd. It is sheerer than I like, so I will use it doubled in some areas. That makes it expensive, but it sure is soft.