When is it acceptable to hire a muscle car?

Needless to say if you really want to minimise your carbon footprint (few of us actually take it seriously) then air travel is a complete no-no. I gather that travel by boat is one of the better ways to traverse the seas.

So my travel is totally non-sustainable. I flew from Edinburgh to London, London to Boston, Overland to Orlando. Flew from Orlando to Seattle, flew from Seattle to San Francisco.

It all depends how you feel about inconsistencies in - all of -our lives. Those who would have us give up eating meat, and dairy products probably have the moral high ground (at least I don't know enough about food production to formulate a decent counter-arguement). I eat meat, because I enjoy doing so (I'm selfish).

I have made no attempt to quantify, my carbon footprint for this trip. I seem to remember hitting a button when I booked my transatlantic flights. But let's not kid ourselves. I think that's just an attempt by those of us who are profoundly wealthy (i.e. those of us in the west, who live on more than a US dollar a day) to assuage our own guilt.

But I have this strange demarcation. I run a tiny little company (http://www.fec-ltd.com/); and we make an annual assessment of our environmental impact. Though we say it ourselves, we're not too bad. We're cyclists, and we use corporation buses for transport. All of us are involved in voluntary environmental conservation works in one way or another. And I've been known to get quite grumpy with our supply chain, for booking internal flights within the uk? How does this demarcation arise. Why is it OK for me to desecrate the environment in my personal life; but not so at work? Not sure.

When I went to hire a car for a few days today......Why did my heart leap when the guy in the hire place announced that he was giving me a 'muscle car'? I had no need for it.

This made me think about whether the internal combustion engine is dead? I served my apprenticeship with a company that provided diesel engine power stations and pumping sets. Reciprocating engines, have been fundamental to how we generate motion and to a lesser extent electrical power (normally small scale for remote and/or island locations) for the last century or so. Are they on the way out or do we just need to find alternative ways of fuelling them?

Not sure. But when I put my foot down and my hired Ford Mustang 'kicked-down' several gears, I accelarated from about 15mph to 90 mph (please don't advise the Deputy Sheriff) as I pulled onto a free way. It was exciting. Fun. Life is short. There may be no afterlife. That's why I eat meat as well........