To start off this post, it would be best to familiarize your self with this article a little, and then read my rebuttal, something that I wrote a little while ago.

Lets talk a little about the accuracy of this article, as a valid criticism.

Toyota never claimed that the Prius gets 60 mpg. Their PR people claim that it CAN get 60 miles per gallon, but they also list its average at 45 mpg city and 53 mpg highway according to the test drive that my mom and I took. I don't think that should make the Prius open to criticism either way, because that is still one of the best on the road. The Hummer DOES NOT EVEN LIST its MPG. Go ahead. Look it up. General Motors does not provide official H2 fuel economy ratings, most reviews have observed high single to low double-digit mileage. So, head to head in terms of fuel efficiency, i think that makes a little difference.

Also, the estimate of 300,000 lifetime miles on the hummer is inaccurate, and potentially absurdly so. While the author doesn't cite all of his sources, that seems optimistic even for GM to be putting out. Every single thing Ive read about the hummer suggests the thing falls apart after 75,000 cause its made of cheap plastic.

But that's not the real point of the article. The real point is that Toyota is a socially irresponsible company because they use nickel from a shitty plant and they ship the batteries around the world, thus the Prius is a lie. Well, besides the fact that GM led the charge to kill the electric car a few years ago, they also got caught with their pants around their ankles when they realized they couldn't keep jobs in Michigan and other traditional American manufacturing plants. Instead, what did they do? they outsourced their jobs to other countries! where its cheaper. So, First Point: GM and other American auto manufacturers are unwilling to invest in the infrastructure to keep new techniques and new cars here. They didn't fight this battle, so I don't think its a fair critique of Toyota to blame them for shipping things when that's the only option.

Next Point: Why is this the only option? Toyota ships it parts all around the world because the places they ship them to are cheapest ways to get the things done the technology needs. If the U.S. car manufacturers would wake up and start creating these parts themselves, there would be no need to ship to china to create nickle foam. They could do it hear cheaper, and much much much more efficiently. If this author questioned why a company would want to spend a lot of money on moving parts around the world so that the batteries could be made correctly... They could also do it with better economic standards. The real problem is that people continue to fight hybrid cars and everything else tooth and nail, point to the INTERMEDIATE points along the way to a greater goal as reasons to halt the progress entirely. The reality is, with the info structure that the US could build in a few years, we could have better plants (and not need to outsource these jobs, because we would be the only ones with the technology)

GM is not the only problem, and I don't want to get into the same one on one dichotomy of Prius v. Hummer, because either way its completely not fair. But GM is a comparison that gets my dander up, because they are a company that has had the opportunity to create the very infrastructure that they would need to create smart energy efficient cars like the Prius HERE with American parts and American labor, cheaply and effectively. And they haven't, and worse, they have fought other companies who have tried. The comparison between the actual Hummer and the actual Prius, on the road and under the same conditions, is absurdly lopsided. The comparison between the infrastructure available to manufacture those two things is misleading, because one is in compete infancy, and one is the end of a long line of General Moters Crap.

In the end, a lot of the energy cost to to build the thing are due new high tech manufacturing processes for which environmentally sound and efficient supply does not exist. They are not, like GM, working with Eisenhower-era engines, parts, and plants. Bottom line is, the energy cost to build a Prius will go down when the manufacturing is further refined. Toyota will need sufficient incentive to invest in refining the supply lines, but I think the reception of the Prius has provided as much. After all, they end up footing the bill for their part's world travel.

The major point glossed over in the article seems to be that buying a Prius means investing in green cars. You are not only contributing to Toyota's ability to produce similar vehicles, but you force other companies to compete for that part of the market. Companies competing to be green would be great (companies competing to market their products as green is not). I believe that the Prius is a genuine step in the right direction, even if its not the final solution in terms of a perfect vehicle. Ever Prius that comes off the rack puts a little more pressure on people to buy the big, bad where as the hummer is obviously a big step backwards.

Now, with all that said, the example of buying something because it A) is a good product, but also because B) it forces the market to move toward making more good products available, shall now be known as the Prius consideration. Just so that my spell check can calm down and relax, I will be abbreviating that as PC to avoid writing the word Prius.

On to "Living the American Green"! I just spoke with a professor from my Alma matta who
thinks that the PC corollary can be used for the project. Basically, he says that we shouldn't even bother focusing on something as useless as home, or personal, energy gathering methods. Instead, if you want to invest in green energy, invest in real wind power. Buy the creds for a giant turbine on the top of a mountain, where its actually maxing out its potential, and by doing so force up the demand for your energy provider to invest in more larger wind turbines. Dabbling with the massively inefficient home stuff isn't the best way to spend the cash.

I think this is exactly the reason that LtAG can be great. The PC corollary is the kind of thing that, given a few episodes of production, we can make much much more real then writing about it on a sheet of paper. We can show, without a shadow of a doubt, that its true: investing in a wind Turbine and putting it in your back yard can barely power a microwave oven. We can also break down the Dollar amounts that you re-coup off your energy bill from having a Wind Turbine yourself, versus what the same amount of money would do to force the hand of your local energy Industry Giant.

What is, and continues to be, very important about this project is LtAG's "come learn with us" mentality. It might well be true that Solar is the only viable project for a suburban home owner looking to add on to their house, but knowing that it is true and demonstrating that it is true are two completely different things. This true/not true dichotomy seems obvious to some, (especially people well versed in the field) but less obvious and more exciting to a large portion of the population. We live in an age where people spend mind numbing amounts of time, energy and money to obfuscate exactly what is going on in all levels of our lives, and exactly what each option does or does not do is a valuable, even crucial part of the experiment. One of the amazing doors that a show like MythBusters opened for us is that failure, as long as its amusing and well written, is a perfectly acceptable reality. And if someone like me, who is relatively knowledgeable, and vaguely well read, still has doubt about each technology's effectiveness: well, it seems like our audience might not be so sure themselves. And the example of PC is exactly the sort of discussion we can have once the wind turbine fails to show any appreciable change.