Letter I sent to a reporter who will remain unnamed.

With prices falling I have been drawing my gas tank down to now a bit under half. Yesterday, on a lark I checked the credit card on line statement (nice tree saver!) and found I last topped off the tank on July 09. The trip odometer read 145 after a trip to the grocery so figure 50 miles per week. My Ranger four stick gets a very solid 20MPG so that two and a half gallons a week or $10 per week at $4 per gallon. I retired last fall but if I had a day job downtown, the airport or such I would use the Light rail. I measured it with GPS the other day and I'm under one mile to the 38th Street station. I'd use a "beater bike" to get there and back. With a ride under one mile a crummy bike works fine. Thinking of the last three weeks I could have saved twenty-five miles of driving, fifty miles would have been "pushing it". I use bicycles mostly for exercise but but for things like DVD rentals I tend to use the bike. The other day I needed a few small plumbing supplies. I bicycled. Again it's mostly for exercise.I tend to be politically conservative and think that "Global Warming" is total BS, especially in terms of CO2. I was pleased when I found out that my 2005 Ford Ranger had a California emissions engine. That said, if I am going to the store to get milk or eggs I'll take the Ranger. That said a lot of the automotive energy conservation is "strategic". Before light rail and when gas was cheap I recall wanting to watch the odometer roll over $100K on my old Toyota 4 stick pickup. I was going for a flu vaccination (forgot and odometer was 100002 when I got there). A year later when I went for a shot the odometer was 106K. My parents were alive then so visiting them put on 2K miles. Work commuting took a solid $1K miles. That's 3K total eliminated. If we extrapolate the current rate I and driving 2.5K per year. An annualized savings of maybe 500 miles. Not much!My low miles driven is mostly "strategic", basically living where I live and driving what I drive. We have the zealots in my neighborhood but to me it seems like "preaching to the choir". If I really sacrifice I might save half a gallon of gas a week.I find it easy to compose via email. I'll post the above on my http://fourfiftygas.com without citing who I sent it to.