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Diesel Dreams
by Marty
June 2005
 A biodiesel Mercedes station wagon I wanted, but it was overpriced and all the way down in the Bay Area. It's sold now. |
So my friend David Bersch sent me an article that kind of pulled it all together for me. I have ideas I want to share about biodiesel, SVO, community financing, post peak oil and all of that.
You can also look at an archive of our sustainable living efforts in Berkeley, including kaseja's infamous ode to pee rags.
finally getting back to this in July 2005
So it's not that I agree totally with all the sentiments of this article, it's just that it laid everything out for me in a way that I can do something with it all. Basically, I am wanting to get my life in alignment with my ideals. I already made a big step towards this end in deciding to move to Lost Valley. But now I am looking at my place in the global community. That has been difficult for me in the past because I feel like the lens of my psychic eye are somewhat shortsighted. It's a lot easier for me to focus on people and events that are near to be. Trying to grasp a huge picture of what's happening all over the world has always left me feeling either helplessly lost or so overwhelmed as to be completely detached. What I got out of this article is a way to look at the big through my everyday life portion of it.
For example, my car. I own a minivan. I never did like the surburban image or the whole nuclear family stereotype. kaseja and I bought a minivan because we felt like we didn't have any other options. We had a 5 year old who still didn't weigh 40 pounds and needed to be in a five point harness carseat. We had a 6 month old baby and kaseja was about to give birth to Mariner. We stayed in denial for a while thinking our station wagon could handle it, but we finally had to admit that we didn't have enough room for three child carseats in the back bench. We bought a new car intending to keep it for as long as the kids were atill living with us, basically run it into the ground. It has been my understanding that that is the most cost effective way to own a car next to getting it one or two years used. And we picked the Honda Odyssey for reliability and good gas mileage for a minivan.
 The bottom of Vince's biodiesel reactor near the shop at Lost Valley. |
A couple of years later, we were introduced to biodiesel and fell in love with the idea. I was skeptical at first. But now I totally love the idea. I love that you don't need to modify the vehicle at all. Any diesel engine will do. I love that it uses vegetable oil that can be found in abundance, even in the waste cycle. I especially love that if you want to, you can mix up a batch yourself. Check out the reactor that Vince and Tammy built here at Lost Valley.
So I did some research and decided I wanted a VW Passat TDI wagon. The gas mileage on those things is incredible. But as you can imagine, there are really hard to find used. So we never did sell our van and get a diesel wagon. A few months ago, kaseja started pushing really hard for us to "go diesel." I balked because I felt like we were getting to the place where the resale value of the van was dropping to the point where it would be more cost effective to keep it until it dies. Also, I didn't want to sacrifice the reliability we have. That van is in really great shape. Honestly, I just didn't trust any of the used biodiesel vehicles that we had looked at.
But once I began to consider how costly extraction of oil is becoming and how that has a trickle effect on the whole economy, I just want to stop participating in it anymore. I know I can't get away from it. Fossil fuels are everywhere. Not only in the lawn mower and the grease I put on my bicycle chains, but it's in the bananas I buy because of the transportation and the packing plant and refridgeration. But that's all the more reason to stop using a gasoline vehicle. More than that, I looked at the cars in the Lost Valley parking lot. Suddenly, it made more sense to me for all of us to sell all our vehicles and pool together the money to buy no more than ten diesel vehicles to meet all the community's needs. I wouldn't even think to propose such a thing. I know how attached we each can be not only to a particular possession (our car) but also to the idea that at any moment, we could each escape in our privately owned car of our own volition and go wherever we want. No community process necessary. We are still caught in the grasp of scarcity and private ownership, myself included. I want to be able to go on vacation with up to seven of us, our dog, and all our gear without puttin anyone else out of a vehicle for running a food pickup in town. I see our van as an investment that I'm expecting to continue to collect on personally.
But if I set all that aside for a moment, and I erase all the cars at Lost Valley with one big eraser, I can envision a model where everyone gets what they need. All diesel, all running on biodiesel or maybe even straight veggie oil, too. Two trucks, a cargo van and a passenger van, two station wagons, and fours little super mileage economy cars. The whole community could go in on them cooperatively like City CarShare. We could have some vehicle reserved during certain times of the week for specific Lost Valley purposes. But aside from that, you wouldn't even need to get the community's approval for day use of a vehicle, just sign it out and take the keys. If you want to take a station wagon away for a weekend or longer, then yeah you would need to clear that simply to make sure there aren't any scheduling conflicts. But, man, wouldn't that be so amazing? Our fuel consumption would drop drastically. I think we would share rides into town more often.
Maybe we could work out the economics of it so that you could get some of your money back when you leave. Say we all sold our gasoline cars and kept the profits privately. Then we find all the vehicles we want to purchase. Pretend I found all ten of the vehicles listed above for $60,000. Some 20 of us put our money together to purchase allthose vehicles. Then we each hold shares in the car co-op based on how much of that $60,000 we contributed. After that, each member of the car co-op pays $25 a month for maintenance, insurance, registration and upkeep. (Parking tickets and traffic violations are paid individually). When new members join the car co-op, they have to put some monetary amount down top buy a minimum amount of shares. Now since it's cars we are talking about, they depreciate over time and so should the value of the shares. But when someone leaves the co-op, they should be able to cash out their shares. So if Joe was one of the intial members and he contributed $6,000 then he held 10% of the value of the vehicles. After five years, when he is leaving, the blue book value on all the vehicles has now dropped down to $30,000. Joe should still be able to get $3,000 back that he can use to help him figure out his transportation needs elsewhere. That's not really much different than where he would have been if he had kept his own $6,000 vehicle in the beginning. But he would have saved so much more in pooled insurance and maintenance costs AND he would have saved many precious resources.
It's something to consider. I can do my part by "going diesel" now. I'm considering buying Vince's old Rabbit AND an old VW or Mercedes station wagon. I'm also looking for a way to take the money that's in my IRA and use it as first-time home buyer's downpayment by "buying-in" to some sort of cooperatively owned housing here at Lost Valley. I want to get any money I have out of oil and into real estate. But that's another story for another time. Thanks for listening.