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Manufacturing everything from tea to software, Indian corporate giant, Tata, has announced that it’s going to start manufacturing cars. Cheap cars. Really, really cheap cars. Tata, which is responsible for about 3% of the Indian GDP has announced that on Thursday, January 10, 2008, it will begin to sell a car that runs about $2,600. It’s launched at India’s rapidly emerging middle class.

India, with a population in excess of 1.1 billion, is expected to see its car sales climb to $145 billion in the next eight years.

Contrary to popular belief, the pollution that goes into manufacturing a car far surpasses anything the car will ever spew into the air, which means that India, already notorious for its terrible urban air, should be taking careful note.

In the meantime, we should hope that Indian middle class doesn’t continue to take its cue from the American middle class, succumbing to the temptation of ravenous consumption.

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So oil just hit an all-time high of $100.05 a barrel. You probably figured this out when you paid $3.35 a gallon for regular unleaded in California around Christmas.

But the number is pretty abstract to you, right? It is to all of us. Save for you eco-terrorists who drive Hummers, most of us probably don’t buy oil by the barrel, so a price fluctuation from $90 to $100 isn’t going to alarm you much. But it really should.

See, a $10 increase on a barrel of oil generates about $57 billion in extra profit for Saudi Arabia, Dubai et al. Our friends in Russia get about $25 billion richer and Iran gets $10 billion richer. And Venezuela isn’t complaining, earning another $8 billion.

Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Venezuela…? We’re just sayin’.

Anyway, there’s not a lot you can do about the cost of oil on a global level, but there is a lot you can do on a personal level to keep your costs down. Like ride sharing. Split the trip with a friend or two.

Call it your patriotic duty if you must. Your country and planet will thank you.

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Ecological activism used to be confined to “crazy liberals.”  You know the stereotype well: a makeup-boycotting, doughy woman who wore knitted socks with Birkenstocks and had her car smugly decked out in green bumper stickers.  The hideous car was an early 80’s Mercedez-Benz that had been converted to run off of vegetable oil.  And every time said woman hit the “gas,” you’d smell french fries.

Well, not much has changed.  Except that the doughy woman has been replaced by Leonardo DiCaprio.  And the canola-guzzling Mercedes has been replaced by any number of innovative cars that don’t make the air smell like a McDonald’s kitchen.

See, while the doughy Birkenstock monger was on to something, she was alienating her audience.  It’s no longer only radicals who live off the grid who are using alternative fuels, it’s your favorite actor or singer.  There’s no need to write off the Green Revolution as extremist; everyone’s doing it.

Leonardo DiCaprio has been one of the environment’s most vocal defenders. Having starred in Titanic (the most successful film ever, grossing over $1.8 billion worldwide), Leo has used his fame to bring attention to the cause.  He drives a hybrid, has solar panels on his house, co-wrote, co-produced and narrated 11th Hour, a documentary about the state of our planet.

Vanity Fair was so impressed with Leo that they granted him their cover for a second time. The May 2007 issue highlighted his work as an environmentalist.

And Leo’s efforts have had a ripple effect in Hollywood.  In February 2007, Orlando Bloom announced that he was building an eco-friendly home in London, complete with solar panels and energy-efficient light bulbs.

Resist the temptation to be snarky and say “Must be nice to be able to afford that.”   Unplug your stupid cell phone charger when you’re not charging it.  Turn off your TV when you leave the room.  Unlike our earlier blogs, this doesn’t take the handiwork of a rocket scientist to figure out.

Being green is easy. And cool. And as Leonardo and Orlando are proving, you don’t have to smell like patchouli to do it.

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Fresh from his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway on Monday, December 10, 2008, Al Gore announced to reporters at the United Nations Climate Change Conference that the United States was “principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.”

He encouraged the the audience to wait for America’s next presidential election in 2008, stating, “One year and 40 days from today, there will be a new inauguration in the United States…I cannot promise that the person who is elected will have the position I expect they will have, but I can tell you I believe it is quite likely.”

Political affiliation aside, Al Gore is right that the United States has been a major roadblock toward international cooperation to help the environment. We’re immunized as a nation (for many reasons), but we must make an effort to help in any way we can. Sharing a ride to work or school will hardly have a negative impact on your life, but for our ailing planet, it will carry a substantially positive one.

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Knowing that governmental bodies are slow to reach agreements is not news, but being slow to reach agreements regarding the environment is even more detrimental than you think. Take the current situation at the U.N. as an example.

On December 12, 2007, it was announced at the U.N. conference on global warming that goals to slash global emissions by 25-40% have been met with a great deal of skepticism. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters that setting those guidelines now “may be too ambitious.” He added, “Practically speaking, this will have to be addressed down the road.”

Unacceptable. “Down the road,” really? It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to figure out that he’s not suggesting a coffee date next week to solve this problem.

See, addressing carbon emissions has to be a priority. Not curbing them means that we will continue (and quite possibly, accelerate) the rate at which our planet is warming. Each day that governmental action is delayed means another day of warming.

So let’s be realistic. Your hands are pretty tied when it comes to forcing the U.N. to speed up its process . What you are very able to do, however, is to take matters into your own hands. Using YaTrips to ride with your friends helps the environment out today. Now. Immediately. No pesky laws to pass, no filibusters, no political agenda.

Don’t wait for the U.N. to get its act together on global warming, make an impact now. Let YaTrips help.

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Yatrips provides a friendly way for people to offer or participate in rides. Based on our Energy Technology (ET), we are committed to help people share rides and make new friends, while helping Mother Earth. We pair people together, based on their common interests in Facebook. Our sophisticated scheduling, matching, and communication technology makes sharing rides easy, convenient, flexible and reliable; and creates an easy transition from social networked-based relationships into in-person friendships. At the same time, we keep track of every pound of CO2 saved by each person and group who use Yatrips’ for Earth-friendly transportation. This is the easiest, most immediate way to get where you want to go and reduce your CO2 emissions on the way.

65 MPG Immediately

You effectively get 65 mpg (based on EPA averages of 21.5 mpg per driver) if you share a ride with two other people, while it will have taken the Federal government 35 years (from 1985-2020) to legislate a standards increase , from 27.5 to 35 mpg. That’s 35 years for a 7.5 mpg increase. Based on this time line, it will take the federal government 140 years to catch up to what you and two friends can do tomorrow (65mpg.) We believe change can come in small meaningful steps without radical alterations in our daily lives. Based on the innate goodness of the American people to help Mother Earth and powered by Yatrips’ Energy Technology, we believe can make a significant contribution. Our One Million Miles Less (link to million mile blog,) campaign utilizes ride sharing through the Yatrips community to reduce the output of over 440 metric tons of CO2. In weight, that equals 68 Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs (link to dinosaur blog)Ride sharing has been around for a long time but had never really worked because it has been almost exclusively based on physical proximity. Until now, ride sharing has been inconvenient and inflexible and quite boring. By combining good old American ingenuity and great technology, Yatrips is changing all that.Lean and CleanYatrips ET does not require several hundred million dollars to develop new technologies; nor does it take 10 years to implement government programs. When you share a ride with someone today, your CO2 emissions have been reduced by 50% as soon as you get out of the car. It’s a lean and clean approach to a problem that worsens, literally, by the minute.Ways to use YatripsUse Yatrips to share and easily arrange rides for

• rides home from college on holidays,
• for a last minute ride from your dorm to campus
• weekend trips otherwise too expensive to take,
• music concerts
• sporting events, like football and baseball games
• places where parking is likely to be a problem, like the movie theater ,downtown
• farmers markets
• employee sponsored carpooling programs
• car conferences ( meeting in the car to and from work, instead of the conference room)
• business and technology conferences
• special groups, like moms who school pool your kids

Use Yatrips for transport to share rides with your friends and with people with whom you share common interests and schedules, and to make new friends. It will make Facebook more meaningful, as well as providing you a way to directly reduce the CO2 emissions you release into the atmosphere.  It is the simplest, most direct way you can contribute to reducing climate change. By sharing a ride and making new friends, you are giving Mother Earth an imperative helping hand.

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Amber, a rocket scientist, calculated that we drive over 2.6 trillion miles each year in America. So how can a campaign to drive A Million Miles Less matter? Because it’s a starting point. We have to begin someplace. Someplace, where each of us can participate in a small, practical way that collectively becomes a significant contribution. Whoever thought that the first 5 or 6 health food stores near college campuses in the Sixties would evolve into the mainstream organic food movement of today? Small meaningful contributions by many people can bring about enormous change.

We can no longer afford the luxury of indifference. Almost everything on Earth that is frozen is melting.

And if we…

If we wait to act, we’ll be in deep trouble. And deep water.

If we wait until we’re able to replace our cars with hybrids, we will have caused large-scale irreparable damage in the interim.

If we wait for government-legislated change, we’ll be waiting about 140 years.

If we continue to emit CO2 at our present rate, we’ll be putting 12,138 pounds of the stuff into our atmosphere every year. Each.

If we pretend that we can’t make a difference, we’re lying.
The greatest American Ambassador to the world in the last 231 years has been the innate goodness of the American people.

Create Good Carma through Yatrips

This is the purpose of A Million Miles Less: to create good Carma by doing something good for the world and ourselves. If we share a ride with two people, we get an effective 65 mpg immediately. That’s a great deal that’s hard to beat and amazingly easy to do, thanks to Yatrips. It’s a great way to do good

Social networking is one of the most dynamic contributions of technology on the internet by facilitating social relationships. Yatrips’ Energy Technology transitions these relationships into in-person friendships in a meaningful way that contributes to the good of the world and documents the difference we are making.

Yatrips’ makes it easy for you to share rides to the places you want and need to go with your friends and to make new friends. When you pick up a friend and go someplace together, you don’t think of that as ride-sharing. Use Yatrips in the same spirit; to share rides, make friends and help Mother Earth.

If only 20,000 people share rides for only 50 miles each trip, that will reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere by 971,000 lbs, or 440 metric tons, or 68 Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs, (slightly under-nourished) and that is what we call a good beginning.

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Karma is a pretty simple concept. It boils down to cause and effect.
Within the realm of environmental action as it pertains to cars, however, we’ve ingeniously replaced the ‘k’ with a ‘c.’

Permit us a brief explanation.

Carma refers to each mile less we drive as the result of our efforts from sharing rides. Accordingly, driving 100 miles less would generate 100 units of Carma. One unit of Carma equals.916 pounds of CO2. Every mile saved sharing rides is accumulated and recorded by Yatrips, on behalf of you, your friends and the Yatrips network, as a whole.

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In America, we each drive an average of 12,500 miles per year. Our vehicles average 21.5 miles per gallon. For every mile we drive (in a passenger car) we release .971 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere. Sorry folks, but that economy car you drive is no exception. That means after one year, you just released 12,137 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere that isn’t going anywhere. In weight, that equals one slightly undernourished Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur into the sky that’s here to stay. Once it’s up there we can’t get rid of it. What we can do is to put fewer monsters up there. If you have a significant other and a couple kids or a bunch of housemates, every year we put up a small herd of dinosaurs and the effect they are having on us is monstrous.

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Yatrips Groups is a flexible way to share rides among people with shared interests. People can use Groups among existing friends or to make new friends. You can create Groups to be public or private. Create a public group to share rides to a football game or create a private group for moms who want to school pool their kids.

Use Yatrips Groups to make ride sharing convenient, economical and enjoyable. And don’t forget. At the same time you are directly reducing CO2 emissions and helping Mother Earth.

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