It was also announced recently that a team of researchers have invented 'regenerative' shock absorbers... there are already regenerative brakes in hybrid cars. Good on 'em... given the amount of energy required to move down a road, we should be recapturing at least some of it. Efficiency will need to come in a number of ways to lessen dependence on oil.

But yeah, driving less is always nice.

And that's with $2 per gallon fuel. Imagine what happens when this cost rises again, as we know it will.

Regenerative shock absorbers? Hey, that makes a green virtue out of our potholes!

Driving is an economic activity. OF COURSE a deep recession results in less driving. That is NOT GOOD. This is like saying a "silver lining' of the recession is that people make less money.

I will never understand the left's hatred of the automobile. An invention of the 20th century that arguable has freed more people to prosper than any other.

Oh wait, maybe I answered my own question.

I've wondered the same about the hatred of the invention of the automobile.

Then I wonder if there was the same fanatic greenies' hatred when mankind invented a way to make fire. We'd all be one big hairy race without fire.

"... the left's hatred of the automobile.

Hatred of automobiles per se is NOT the objection. It is correct, open-faced ACCOUNTING for costs to the environment ... uh, make that life-or-death ruin of the ecology of human habitation, which are greedily and harmfully 'hand-waved' away, out of sight -- as if the costs of clean-up repair deferred onto our descendants, (when and IF), can be righteously ignored figuring Quarterly 'profits' -- and those COSTS (such as automobile pollution) can NOT be discounted as continued from the 20th century.

It's not automobiles that social-awareness (leftist) 'hates.' It is corruptly money-mad automobile Makers exploiting the public's (humankind's) natural resources for private advantage.

Either Make cars that don't ruin Earth-living, or cost the TRUE accounting of 20th-century car Making.

Thanks Tensk.
Or to put it another way: humvees can drive you into Portland or into a war in Iraq.
Some people can't handle the power!

Metro's goal is less driving.

This demonstrates the ONLY PROVEN way to reduce driving and increase transit usage: lowered standard of living. That is where “drive less” and use transit campaigns are leading us.

Tenskwatawa As usual Tenskwatawa has no idea of reality. He wants "It is correct, open-faced ACCOUNTING for costs to the environment" without realizing that mass transit is every bit a s bad, so he is really saying don't travel at all. Juat stay home as if you were in prison. That is the Green solution: no travel, Tiny homes. Don't have children. Just like prison.

Thanks
JK