Greenlist: Travel and Leisure

>> The new alternative fuel: Human fat?! An engineer and sailor from New Zealand, along with 2 of his crew members, got 2.5 gallons of fat liposucked out of their bodies to use as fuel to circumnavigate the globe in world-record time. Mostly, however, the boat'll be fueled by biodiesel.

>> Muscle car aficionados unlikely to suffer from the new 35 mpg standard. "Putting aside the question of whether anyone needs that kind of power, you can argue the 35 mpg standard will make all cars - including high-performance vehicles - better. Some of the first things Detroit will do to boost fuel efficiency are reduce weight, improve aerodynamics and reduce parasitic loads by replacing engine-driven components like power-steering pumps with electric parts. That's a sure-fire recipe for better performance even if horsepower figures decline significantly." Earlier: 35 mpg by 2020 might mean just 33.2 mpg for Detroit.

>> Green hotels in California, reviewed. Along with Santa Monica's own Ambrose, The Orchard Garden in San Francisco, Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa in Napa Valley, and Cedar House Sport Hotel in Truckee get some ink. Earlier: Green hotels in the LA area.

>> The ultimate R&R: A green burial. "If nothing else, penny-pinching baby boomers might be willing to embrace the economic good sense of natural burial, which is thought to cost one half to one-third the price of a regular burial." (via Utne)

Comments

[Dan]

It's certainly possible to build a lightweight, high performance sports car. Just look at the Lotus Elise. It weighs less than 2000 lbs, has a 190 hp, 4 cylinder engine, and it outperforms sports cars with twice the horsepower. However the problem is, sports car buyers expect a certain level of room, comfort and practicality, and the Elise has none of those things. A Corvette is a luxury car in comparison.

I don't want to sound too, pessimistic. If we ignore the most powerful exotics, which are low volume sellers and not driven very much, most sports cars get decent mileage comparable with a family sedan. A Porsche Boxster gets 20 MPG city, 29 MPG hwy. Even a Corvette gets 16/26 MPG, and most others fall somewhere in between. We may not have to sacrifice much room or power to get close to 35 MPG, and sports cars are such low sellers anyway, it won't take many economy car sales to average out to 35 MPG.