A little support

I was pleased to discover that Time Magazine agreed with the closing sentiments of my last post, that checking tire pressure is a totally reasonable suggestion when it comes to dealing with the energy crisis.

The Tire Gauge Solution: No Joke

I think this stuff's really important so I am going to copy some of the text below:

Politics ain't beanbag, and Obama has defended himself against worse
smears. The real problem with the attacks on his tire-gauge plan is
that efforts to improve conservation and efficiency happen to be the
best approaches to dealing with the energy crisis — the cheapest,
cleanest, quickest and easiest ways to ease our addiction to oil,
reduce our pain at the pump and address global warming. It's a pretty
simple concept: if our use of fossil fuels is increasing our reliance
on Middle Eastern dictators while destroying the planet, maybe we ought
to use less.

The RNC is trying to make the tire gauge a symbol of unseriousness, as
if only the fatuous believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign
oil without doing the bidding of Big Oil. But the tire gauge is really
a symbol of a very serious piece of good news: we can use significantly
less energy without significantly changing our lifestyle. The energy
guru Amory Lovins has shown that investment in "nega-watts" — reduced
electricity use through efficiency improvements — is much more
cost-effective than investment in new megawatts, and the same is
clearly true of nega-barrels. It might not fit the worldviews of
right-wingers who deny the existence of global warming and insist that
reducing emissions would destroy our economy, or of left-wing
Earth-firsters who insist that maintaining our creature comforts would
destroy the world, but there's a lot of simple things we can do on the
demand side before we start rushing to ratchet up supply.

We can use those twisty carbon fluorescent lightbulbs. We can unplug
our televisions, computers and phone chargers when we're not using
them. We can seal our windows, install more insulation and adjust our
thermostats so that we waste less heat and air-conditioning. We can use
more-efficient appliances, build more-efficient homes and drive
more-efficient cars, preferably with government assistance. And, yes,
we can inflate our tires and tune our engines, as Republican governors
Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Charlie Crist of Florida have
urged, apparently without consulting the RNC. While we're at it, we can
cut down on idling, which can improve fuel economy another 5%, and cut
down on speeding and unnecessary acceleration, which can increase
mileage as much as 20%.

And that's just the low-hanging fruit. There are other ways to reduce
demand for oil — more public transportation, more carpooling, more
telecommuting, more recycling, less exurban sprawl, fewer unnecessary
car trips, buying less stuff and eating less meat — that would require
at least some lifestyle changes. But things like tire gauges can reduce
gas bills and carbon emissions now, with little pain and at little cost
and without the ecological problems and oil-addiction problems
associated with offshore drilling. These are the proverbial win-win-win
solutions, reducing the pain of $100 trips to the gas station by
reducing trips to the gas station. And Americans are already starting
to adopt them, ditching SUVs, buying hybrids, reducing overall gas consumption. It's hard to see why anyone who isn't affiliated with the oil industry would object to them.

Yeah, that's what I meant.