It is time to start planning how you will get around after the Oil Age, kossacks.

The rest of the world knows this is the end of The Age Of Oil.

Our planes are dropping from the skies. Truck drivers are striking on the highways. Our oil-based agriculture is going belly-up. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Gas prices will not  be going down.

Mercedes Benz, maker of the SmartForTwo, says it will stop producing  gasoline cars altogether in 7 years.

Cross posted variations at The Confluence and EENR Progressive Blog

Do you want to stop the carnage? You can. Say the word.  

Here is how we can do it:

At the Bali Climate talks, the US was literally loudly boohed by virtually every other nation when our Representative refused to agree to binding targets.
A couple of days after this Bali roar of international fury,

I watched this video of Venturi's partly solar EV skim gracefully across a desert.

While the oilygarchy here fiddles, olde Europe has leaped ahead of us in bringing zero emissions EVs to market, with a combination of great new

legislation like London's congestion charge and also just plain sensible CO2 regulating rules from their version of the NHTSA: ECE Rules.

The ECE Rules are actually designed to deliver clean green transportation. Especially in the SUV, truck category, we need their ECE vehicles. Now, more than ever with the final energy bill protecting gasguzzling trucks and SUVs.

This is not a diary, merely a notification, but maybe someone more techie than I can tell me whats happening here:

This morning Al Gores site www.current.com is not working. It takes forever to load and if you look at the bottom to see whats loading, it goes from current.com ...then it transfers you to s.current.com...is that another site?

When that loads it arrives minus its formatting, in that crappy basic format. Is someone hacking Al Gores site?

The first time I hosted a MoveOn event, everything went wrong. So this time, hosting a Potluck For The Planet/cum Live Earth talkfest last weekend, a very organised and capable friend of mine from the El Cerrito Democratic Club co-hosted and we tried to give everybody a chance to speak publicly for 4 minutes each, but just couldn't be heard above the din!

...from people I've never met before

...A How-To Manual For Legislators.

Imagine how you would feel if you had to abandon a very lucrative business that you had run all your life, one that you planned to leave to your grandkids, just to see all your hopes and dreams smashed, because scientists claim your lifeswork literally threatens our species' survival.

This is the horror that faces the fossilfuel titans of what I now realize are not so much Red States, but what we should call Brown States.

Complete disintegration.

It is not easy being Brown.

It is very understandable that the individuals who live off the fossilfuel dependant oil, coal and auto industries resist accepting the science of our dire futurewhen it clashes with their own personal hopes and dreams. Its human nature to resist what harms you and your family, and resisting the massive infrastructure destruction it means to your Brown industry.

This is a truly astounding hearing. I get a bit backed up listening to all our climate change hearings, and I am just up to Wednesday's now. I was expecting this Bingaman hearing to be covering more of how to deal with our drought issues in the West and Southwest associated with climate change following up from a couple this comittee had had earlier this month.

Instead, a bombshell.

Nobody in the Navajo Nation in New Mexico has running water! The Bush administration has clearly stonewalled this for 5 years.

Are we going to abandon people in the deserts?

You'd never know it to read some of the diaries recently here at my beloved Redstate dailykos, but our Democrats in congress are crafting great bills in this SolveSomething Congress.

The Oiligarchy that runs this country took a little hit last week. Thanks to us. The SolveSomething Congress is doing great and we have come half way with the first Energy Bill.

But the Senate version narrowly lost one little piece of excellent legislation and YOU MUST call to put it back!

100+ MPG PHEV Legislation!
.

.
Heres what this V2G technology will do, what legislation is needed, and who's on board so far, and who you should call:

Small cars are safer than SUVs
Per a new ICCT report...

Most technologies to increase fuel economy do not affect safety; most technologies to increase safety do not affect fuel economy.
Reducing car mass while improving vehicle structure, using advanced materials and designs, can simultaneously increase fuel economy and safety.

Comparing these Green fuel-sippers on the left to the Red-for-Danger porcus totus we see on the right...

...we discover that

Reducing the weight of heavier SUVs and trucks increases fuel economy and improves the safety of all vehicles on the road.

SUVs are a danger to themselves and others.

Since Republicans don't believe in Science, global warming doesn't faze them. They love Synfuels. But Obama?

Its bad enough, where gas is taking us:

NASA Says US Temperatures To Rise 10 Degrees By 2080

This maps per decade temperature rise:
1 degree Centigrade = nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit EVERY DECADE!  

For instance my state, California = + .04 C therefor it will be 9 degrees hotter by 2100

A President could reverse this! NOT take us twice as  fast to Armagedden.

You know how I'm such an EVangelical kossack and I'm dEVoted to mending our fuelish ways so I have been following EV developments, ever since seeing Who Killed The Electric Car, because I want us all to be able to go carbon neutral tomorrow.

Last week I read that in fact you can buy a mainstream priced ($25000) and mainstream speed (75mph) electric car NOW and I couldn't wait to tell you.

But then I saw it.

As a designer I do balk at certain aesthetics. Am I being too fussy?
I know from previous polls, that most of you kossacks are in more intellectual lines of work. So, my question for you is...

Last nights debates apparently included the command that the Republican candidates put their hands up if they don't believe in evolution. Almost a third did. (Since I won't pay for Fauxist News - can't get MSNBC without Faux - I didn't see it.)

To me evolution is a code word for science. And we know why science is suddenly a big danger to The Oiligarchy: climate change.

Looks like they are lining up the biggest gun of all to help the biggest oil company fight the planet. Will this fly? Is this to be the battle line?

I believe in God and so I believe in science. My God is a treehugger.

On Monday the Finance Committee hosted the CEO of the California EV company Tesla

in a hearing to consider how governments might actually help rather than hurt the planet, actually learning from the Japanese government's 50% subsidies that jumpstarted their hybrid technology and made them surpass Detroit.

Even the Republicans actually are considering a subsidy for EV car buyers of up to $25,000 for a business purchase of an EV: (see my entire available EV showroom below) and to subsidise the now available conversions of current hybrids to plug-ins so they get 100 mpg!

TWO towns are being evacuated because they have almost run out of water and cannot afford to indefinitely cart supplies.  

This news story is reality today. Its just not happening in your neighbourhood. Yet. Its from Australia, where our future climate awaits us. They have had a 12 year drought, doubling desertification.

The percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

The IPCC's second report includes an astonishing prediction that temperatures in the American West and Southwest will increase by an average of nine degrees fahrenheit by the end of this century.

The next century will be like a permanent 1930s

[UPDATE JUNE 2008: I will be updating this EV list soon as there are now quite a few changes and additions to the serious freeway speed EVs that will be on the market by 2010. The prices here are $6000 under the projected prices currently as that amendment got killed by John McCain's mighty veto pen when he did not show up for the cloturevote]

Unlike when we shifted unconsciously from horses to horsepower we can mold the future with intelligent design and save our dear planet into the bargain. What could be nicer.

If you love your planet, your next vehicle is simply not going to have a combustion engine.

Any more than your next fridge would have a combustion engine.