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IN THIS ISSUE |
BWC Member Specials
Gas-Saving Tips
Top Story
TravelCool!
This Is the AutoErotic Edition of Kicking Asphalt!
Washington Watch
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BWC Member Specials |
Check Out Boston With Urban AdvenTours
BWC Members Receive a 15% Discount!
Urban AdvenTours Boston was founded on the belief that the healthiest, most environmentally friendly, and overall best way to explore Boston is on two wheels! They know tour buses not only pollute, but they can't get down all of
Boston's narrow streets to discover the hidden gems and architectural marvels that make this historic city so amazing.
Their authentic street guides lead small, intimate groups through the streets and along beautiful bike paths, showing you the best of Boston by Bicycle. They even use their ‘Urban Mobile', their vegetable-oil run truck to deliver bikes
around the city. So when you make your way to Boston, please remember to book a bicycle tour or bike rental with Urban AdvenTours, and as always, ‘keep it wheel'!
Go to the
Urban AdvenTours website and use the promo code ‘BWC' and receive 15% off a tour or bike rental.
More BWC Member Discounts:
- Eco-Travel Discounts
- Eco-Lodging Discounts
- Various Member Discounts |
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Gas-Saving Tips |
Make Sure Your Charger's Charged
Electrical conductivity is important, whether you want to power an appliance, restart someone's heart, or win a rousing game of
"Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence". It's equally important for assuring top fuel efficiency. Here are a couple of tips to help keep the juice in your jalopy flowing:
- Check your spark plugs regularly, and replace them when necessary. Old, worn-out plugs sap your engine's power and decrease fuel efficiency.
- Examine your ignition wires periodically. Old ignition wires can crack and leak electricity instead of passing it to the spark plugs.
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Top Story |
 Happy Birthday To Us!
Better World Club Turns Five Years Old!
Plans For Our Fifth Birthday Party Include Eating Cake With Our Hands, Not Letting Other Party Guests Play With Our Gifts, And A Potential Temper Tantrum After We Come Down From Our Sugar Rush
Things were pretty rough back in July of 2002. America was reeling from the events of September 11th, 2001, and the economy was still recovering from the dot.com crash. Perfect time to start up a new
business, right? Probably not, but no one else in the auto club industry was addressing environmental concerns, so we bravely stepped into the breach and created the nation's first (and still) only environmentally-conscious auto club.
Better World Club was officially born July 1, 2002 when we started selling memberships to the public. These were brave souls who didn't mind joining a brand-new auto club that had yet to actually tow anyone.
Five years and some 20,000 members later, Better World Club is still going strong.
Just a few milestones:
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Attaining the fastest growth rate in the industry. (It took AAA over a century to reach 45 million members. At BWC's current rate of growth, it will surpass AAA's membership in less than half that time.)
Complete Story
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Contest! |
Earth Friendly Never Sounded So Good!
Tell Us Your Idea for an Environmentally-Friendly CD and Win a Whole Mess of CDs from Universal Music
The Grand-Prize Winner Will Receive 20 CDs, Including a "Best-Of" Album from Live Earth Performer Melissa Etheridge
All Prize CDs Come in Universal Music Enterprise's Fully Recyclable Eco-pak (tm) Packages
On 7/7/07, Al Gore will be making history through his Live Earth concerts for the environment. We encourage all of our members to check out the
Live Earth website and sign up to either host or join a Live Earth party.
Better World Club and Universal Music would like to help you keep the party going long after the concerts are over with a Live Earth-inspired contest. Being the smartest and potentially most patient people on the planet, ‘Kicking Asphalt'
readers are uniquely qualified to tell us:
"What is your idea for the perfect environmentally-friendly CD (music and packaging)?"
Complete Story
More Info on Universal Music's Environmentally-Friendly CDs:
Number 1's – A brand new line of CDs featuring Number 1 hits from the biggest names in music. All come in Eco Friendly packaging.
20th Century Masters Millennium Collection – The best selling single artist music compilation series of all time! Now available in eco friendly packaging.
Melissa Etheridge – Greatest Hits: The Road Less Traveled –In addition to her Greatest Hits, this re-packaged CD also contains the Academy Award winning song "I Need To Wake Up" from "An Inconvenient Truth". This is the first time that
this song is available on CD.
If you don't feel like entering the contest, you can buy Universal Music's environmentally-friendly CDs on Amazon.com |
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TravelCool! |
Need To Get Out Of Town In A Hurry?
Try Our Spiffy New Booking Engine
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This Is the AutoErotic Edition of Kicking Asphalt |
BWC is now publishing KA twice a month. This edition focuses more on insurance and cars. Check out the exclusive, car-related content of this edition:
- BWC Alternative Fuel Report
- BWC High-Mileage Car Review
- Recall Information
- Lemon Information |
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Washington Watch |
We Interrupt Consideration of the Energy Bill for a New Idea
It's Unorthodox to Raise New Issues with Congress, But What the Heck
Congress Is Heading for Recess, So Let's Discuss Something that Would Make A Real Difference: A Sky Trust
by Mitch Rofsky, President, Better World Club
In the last Driving Change, we passed along the cynicism of NY Times Columnist Tom Friedman, who believes that Congress hasn't been able to escape the delights of energy money and shape a rational energy policy.
True enough. But part of a sane energy policy would appear to be higher gas prices, and Congressmen don't need lobbyists to tell them that's politically risky. It's time to think of something bigger--and, hopefully, better.
Peter Barnes has been doing just that. Peter was one of the founders of Working Assets, the socially responsible mutual fund that I once managed, as well as Working Assets Long Distance.
After retiring from Working Assets, Peter has used his time to think about how the marketplace could be used to solve various social problems. This led to his terrific book, Capitalism 3.0.
There, Peter resurrects the potential of the "commons", largely publicly owned assets (his definition is even broader but you'll have to read his book.) A key example would be...the sky. A "sky trust" could set/auction fees with polluters
to compensate for their imposition on the trust. It costs a polluter to dump trash onto your lawn or other private property, why shouldn't it be the same for publicly owned assets? It would be a key strategy to stop our sky and waterways
from being used as free public toilets, as they are today. That's the environmental case. But the benefits of a sky trust don't stop there. Barnes makes the case that with higher energy prices, dividends from the trust would support US
purchasing power. "Dividends (from the trust) are a way to replenish consumer purchasing power and keep the economy from tanking," says Barnes.
Complete Story |
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More Washington Watch in Kicking Asphalt and Driving Change: |
- Keeping Up With The Chinese? Ask Your Senator To Support Higher Fuel Mileage Standards
- Bush's Climate Policy Selflessly Ensures that No Progress Will Be Made During His Tenure--And the G8 Buys It
- Senate Passes Energy Bill, Increases Fuel Mileage Standard |
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