Gas is still too cheap

I'm curious, you say that driving your regular car for 2 weeks used up a substantial (I'm going to assume 30-40% of your budget) lets see... average person drives 12,000 miles a year, 1000 miles a month, so you drove for 500 miles in 2 weeks.. average car gets 25 mpg so you used approx 20 gallons of fuel.. at 4 dollars a gallon that comes out to 80 dollars..

35% of 230 dollars comes out to $80.50.. so you live on approx 230 dollars a month.. yet were able to buy a new Prius that costs according to Edmunds 21,500 dollars.. do you have any idea how many miles you could have driven your "old" car on 21,500 dollars? lets see.. at 4 dollars a gallon, you would get 5375 gallons of gasoline, and with 25 mpg that's 134,375 miles.. now you have to take into account the gas that your Prius uses.. lets say that it averages twice your regular car, 50 mpg.. over 134,375 miles your using 2687.50 gallons of gas that costs 10,750 dollars so.. to go the same mileage as your old car, that I'm assuming is paid for is COSTING YOU 32,250 dollars.. and you say your eating ramen and mac and cheese..

 

Yes trees "grow back" if left to nature. In managed "forests", foresters are discovering that by the third or fourth generation the trees don't do so well,,,especially in a monos-sylva tree farm. Dutch elm, pine bark beetle, spruce bud worm to name a few, plus soil degradation etc take their toll on forests.

But more importantly, in many (most?) parts of the world, we don't let the forest grow back. In the Amazon Basin, the amount of forest lost each yar to crop land is huge. In Asia the amount of forest lost for fuel is also huge. Temperate rain forests are lost to development, and even the Boreal forest of Siberia and Northern Canada is being lost. So to assume that the trees will "just grow back" is wrong.

Icarus

 

Don't feed the troll IMO. It is obvious he is not up on forest ecology and environmental issues. Same as the others we get here each month who try to argue from a political standpoint as opposed to a data based position.

 

Do a search on Galaxee's other posts. Her Prius is several years old and is the gas guzzler of the family. It was bought several years ago when Hubby still had a decent job. Hubby has a long commute taking classes to retrain after being fired as a certified Prius tech because of bad back caused by work. His main mode of transportation is a veggie diesel. They get the fuel for that for free. When that car went out of commission they had to use a gas guzzling loaner.

So try going from no budget for hubby's car to $4.50 gallon with a long commute every day. He has no income. She has very limited income being grad student. Their budget is tight. They've had to move (and downsize) to cheaper and cheaper apt. as cost of living has increased.

 

i before e except after c is just weird science when it comes to spelling

 

i before e except after c...unless it's the word weird. Weird, eh?