The upside of high gas prices is becoming evident as Americans flock to dealers of small and hybrid cars, revealing that we can, if whacked in the wallet, lower our greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s another silver lining not so readily apparent, but quite compelling. According to researchers at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) when people curb their driving, both by slowing down and driving less, traffic fatalities decline as well.

After studying driving fatalities and gas prices dating back to the 1985, these health policy experts are predicting that the current gas prices of $4 a gallon (or more), if sustained for at least a year, could bring a drop in traffic fatalities of more than 1,000 a month nationwide.

Michael Morrisey, Ph.D., director of UAB’s Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, and David Grabowski, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School co-authored on the study. The two, who worked together at UAB, also have studied other factors that affect traffic fatalities such as higher beer taxes, graduated driving laws and tighter blood alcohol limits, said Troy Goodman, a UAB spokesman.

While all of these factors played a positive role ,“the most startling affect was this rise in gas prices,” Goodman said.

Morrisey himself expressed some surprise at the results, which were formally released Friday, but said the findings show a clear correlation between high gas prices and “lives saved.”

“For every 10 percent rise in gas prices, fatalities are reduced by 2.3 percent. The effects are even more dramatic for teen drivers,” he said.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

By Barbara Kessler

Who would have thought we’d be hoping that gas prices had settled in at $4 a gallon? Instead, U.S. government tracking shows that they are creeping past that benchmark, ranging from an average high of $4.59 in California to a low of $3.95 in Texas this middle week of June. It’s making the math a little harder: For awhile there, people in most parts of the country could figure that their 15-gallon tank would cost about $60 to fill. But Californians are now looking at more than $68 and drivers in New York ($63.90) and Washington ($64.95) are facing only slightly less pain. And pity the West Coast truck or SUV driver with a 20-gallon tank, they’ll need nearly $100 to top off.

Are Americans in shock? Um, yeah. Several people we talked to at the pump last week say they’re feeling trapped, but are trying to seize what control they have, making modest changes and thinking about ways out of the oil crunch… Watch the report.

Nearly 20 years ago, a magical substance called Beano was introduced that negated an age-old dietary reality: If you took it with a meal, you could eat all the beans (or other troublesome foods) you wanted without worrying about having gas when you left the dinner table.

Beano might mostly be used to avoid social embarrassment, but now a team of scientists is applying a similar concept toward a much higher goal: combating global warming. Biotech scientists from Australia and New Zealand are working at Gramina to produce a special grass that will reduce the amount of methane cows burp up after eating it. (They believe the new variety also will be better at growing in hot climates.)

Methane, a greenhouse gas, is said to account for around 14% of contributions to global warming, and a single dairy cow can produce 550-700 liters of the stuff each day. (Whew!) By suppressing the development of an enzyme in grass, the team is making it more easily digestible to cows, reducing the methane that results as a byproduct of breaking down cellulose.

As with many mad-scientist notions, though, this new effort may not work out exactly as advertised. Some scientists not involved with the team have suggested that, due to chemical reactions in the cow’s gut, total methane emissions could actually increase instead — though they acknowledge that the same factors could make cows more productive, meaning that the milk/methane ratio for cows might still improve.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media