One common thread in these converging issues of the environment, the economy and oil pricing, is how much we continue our coddling of excessive motoring.
My sister and brother-in-law are living ambassadors of a culture that cannot see life without personal, private motoring means. They live in midtown San Diego, a place where there is no mandatory Compulsory Motoring Program. It's actually possible for them to live without these prosthetic extensions...but they do not; they each live with their own private vehicle within 100 feet at all times.
No one is spared from being monologued.
Perhaps it's an implausible suggestion to assume that correct urban planning might decrease our reliance on private motoring. Physical form can only do so much. It apparently doesn't do enough to provide for my sister and brother a means to live with just one vehicle, let alone no vehicles.
All we've collectively done over the past 18 months is just drive a little less. If oil goes up fifty bucks, we will just drive a little more less. If a carbon tax is installed, we will just drive a lot more less. If we find a way to decrease the hybrid premium, we will drive a little more. If we find a way to mass produce plug-in hybrids, we will drive a little more more. If oil drops fifty bucks, we will drive a lot more more.
I know my monologues are a one-man think tank, divorced from reality. It's an absurdity to suggest that we ought make other arrangements for living here in Merika, because the reality is we won't. We are so entrenched in a particular living 'standard' that we will destroy ourselves and/or others before we change. All I see, all I see, is that we are too narrowly focused on keeping our cars running at any cost.
I am frightened by the prospect of a vehicle that runs on water, bat shit, or some other alt.energy source. I see that as a green light to pave over every square foot of North America. Driving cannot be 'green', in my humble opinion. This world isn't better because we now have Escalade Hybrids. In my world, in my own little monologued world, it would simply be better with fewer cars.
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2 comments:
i beg your pardon, brother dear. while we certainly have much room for improvement, i take umbrage with your assertion. we take advantage of the opportunities our pedestrian-friendly part of the city provides. could we do more (or, rather, less?)? absolutely. but i have always been mindful of my responsibilities to larger society, and continue to make incremental changes along the way.
for the past 11 years we have made a conscious decision to live in a place where it's easy to live with little (and sometimes, no) driving. we've paid dearly to do so; what we could buy elsewhere for our 950 sq feet and one bedroom boggles the mind. i can have a perfectly productive and enjoyable weekend without ever getting in my car. even before the green hipsters lived here, we lived here.
we often walk to the little corner market and the grocery store (and to the drop-off site for our CSA). we frequently walk to the drug store, and to our local hardware & sundry store (rather than driving into the suburbs to go to home depot or target). this morning i walked to the dry cleaner. and yes ... i completely get the irony of that. i don't happen to have a "green" dry cleaner anywhere nearby. i've looked.
and hey, we don't have kids (by choice). we're leaving behind no spawn to suckle at the teat of this bone-dry planet. we don't spend our weekends driving around between activities at different suburban locales. no one we know has any motivation to purchase plastic or lead-laced toys in mass quantities (on our behalf, anyway).
i also want to point out - with much personal defensiveness - that there are professions that are vehicle-dependent, including mine. a geriatric social worker, i respond to emergencies in my clients' homes, take them to medical appointments, etc., etc. there would simply be no way for me to do this work without a car, and a moderately sized one at that (to transport wheelchairs, walkers, and such). and while i realize that there are many cogent arguments against the conditions that have rendered my profession necessary (children living hundreds or thousands of miles away from their parents, a medical system that keeps people living for decades with chronic diseases), the need exists and those questions are not really mine with which to grapple. i write my representatives encouraging them to pass assisted suicide legislation every time a piece passes before them, but beyond that, there's not a whole lot i can do. i am simply not going to strap ethel to the back of my mountain bike to get to her podiatry appointment, or ask fred to just wait the short 45 minutes for the next bus that goes to the emergency room. and i'm sure there are dozens upon dozens of professions in which this unfortunate dependence is the case.
so consider the plight of the normal guy from time to time. i'm not a radical, even though i care an awful lot. i do everything i can think to do to reduce my consumption of factory-farmed food. i buy cornstarch-based bags for picking up my dog's poop, for peet's sake. i'm a productive part of regular society trying to do as little damage as i can, but still needing to just get by.
Awesome! I certainly provoked the response I was looking for.
That's the Dilemma of the Monologues, isn't it? That I live with all my consumer stuff in a suburban wasteland, and then somehow I 'go green' by slapping up a coupla solar panels? And then, to make up for it, I deride anyone else whose efforts far exceed my own?
You must sense my sarcasm. No umbrage is necessary.
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