Word: gal
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Anyone who has paid more than $2 a gal. for gas or pondered an electricity bill lately might doubt that the U.S. energy crunch could be easing. Energy inflation in the past year has hit the economy like a slap in the face, and the sting has lingered. Collectively, we've spent $28.2 billion more on natural gas and electricity in the first quarter of this year than in the same period last year, money we could have used to buy other things that keep an economy going. But as more companies bring fuel supplies and power plants online...
...middle of Arizona's Sonoran Desert, the bright-blue flag and the 65-gal. water tank are hard to miss. This is no mirage; it's the work of a small volunteer group called Humane Borders, which last year began to erect emergency watering stations in the desert to help aliens stay alive as they try to enter the U.S. As the Rev. Robin Hoover hauls heavy plastic containers of water from his car, he explains its mission: "We want to take death out of the equation...
...tanker trucks like Chavez's are the only source of water clean enough for drinking and bathing. So when pipa No. 415 pulls up over the dunes, it's a community event: families emerge from their shanties as if to greet a rich uncle bearing gifts. Chavez pumps 500 gal. of free water into concrete cubes called pilas, which, say residents, can also mean the "batteries" that recharge their lives...
...Paso, meanwhile, is concerned enough about the water problem to be planning what will be the largest inland desalination plant in the U.S., costing $52 million, that will clean 20 million gal. of brackish water each day. In March the city started offering residents 50[cents] per sq. ft. to rip up their water-guzzling lawns and replace them with rocks and plants native to the Chihuahua desert. Juarez has banned any new high-water use maquiladoras and is encouraging factories to build water-recycling facilities...
When gas was selling at $1 a gal. two summers ago, we didn't make Strom Thurmond pretend to hear people testify about that. We were happy, running through gasoline-spewing sprinklers and drinking gasoline wine in a gasoline haze. And like the ant in the fable about the ant and the bug that wasn't an ant, we should have been saving. As I learned the hard way, though, saving hundreds of gallons of gas in those little red plastic containers in your parents' garage isn't the safest way to launch your investing career...