Daily Score Blog

"Staycation...a portmanteau that combines “stay” and “vacation” and refers to a holiday that takes place either at or near home."

With gas well above $4 per gallon this summer, and with airlines raising prices and canceling flights because of high fuel costs, it's not too surprising to find a word like "staycation" gaining a toehold in the North American lexicon.  Google now finds nearly 200,000 web pages that use the word -- most of them added within the last few months, if my casual browsing is any indicator.

But even back when fuel wasn't so pricey, some of my favorite vacations were spent within a 50 mile radius of home.  It's easy to forget how many parks, museums, nature walks, boat rides, and all-around fun can be found close to where you live -- which makes a staycation a perfect opportunity to reconnect  yourself to your home town.

So I'm curious:  is anyone out there planning a staycation this year?  Where are you, and what do you plan on doing?

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user matildaben, distributed under a Creative Commons license.]

The director of the US Congressional Budget Office talks sense about how to make climate policy fair to low- and middle-income consumers.  They've got a long version (pdf) and a short version on their blog.

If you care about this issue at all, you really should read these.  Seriously.

Over at Gristmill, blogger JMG takes up my quixotic challenge to rid the world of compressed-chemical dusters. They're basically greenhouse gas atom-bombs -- which I described in a pair of posts here and here -- and they should be banned immediately.

As far as I know, there's no government action to outlaw the little bastards, but I do think there's hope. In fact, this is a perfect time for the private sector to take the lead. Now if only there were some large-volume progressive-minded retailer looking to burnish its green credentials... Maybe a big wholesaler headquartered in the Northwest... like in the Seattle suburbs...

(Cough, Costco, cough.)

Did you say Costco? Hey, great idea!

Now, I'd rather have them banned outright, but incremental steps are welcome too. One good step would be for Costco to simply stop purchasing cannisters with HFC-134a, substituting cannisters with HFC-152a, which does exactly the same thing with about one-tenth the climate impact. Another good step would be to stop using HFC cannisters and instead sell CO-2 cannisters, which are drastically less harmful. A purchasing decision by an outlet as big as Costco can have a meaningful impact all the way back up the supply chain.

And then Costco should do a little trumpeting of it's actions: make a big deal about banning the greenhouse gas bombs. That would have the effect of both raising consumer awareness and raising the bar for competitors.

If you want to contact Costco, the info is at the end of JMG's post. But please be nice about it, fergoshsakes. Retailers are almost certainly unaware of the cannisters' greenhouse gas contents.